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Full-Text Articles in Law
Sentencing High-Loss Corporate Insider Frauds After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Sentencing High-Loss Corporate Insider Frauds After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
The Federal Sentencing Guidelines have for some years prescribed substantial sentences for high-level corporate officials convicted of large frauds. Guidelines sentences for offenders of this type moved higher in 2001 with the passage of the Economic Crime Package amendments to the Guidelines, and higher still in the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Today, any corporate insider convicted of even a moderately high-loss fraud is facing a guideline range measured in decades, or perhaps even mandatory life imprisonment. Successful sentencing advocacy on behalf of such defendants requires convincing the court to impose a sentence outside (in many cases, far …
Drifting Down The Dnieper With Prince Potemkin: Some Skeptical Reflections About The Place Of Compliance Programs In Federal Criminal Sentencing (Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Drifting Down The Dnieper With Prince Potemkin: Some Skeptical Reflections About The Place Of Compliance Programs In Federal Criminal Sentencing (Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article explains how the federal organizational sentencing guidelines work and how they have created incentives for businesses to set up compliance programs. It then considers the paucity of evidence that compliance programs actually prevent the occurrence of corporate crime. It also questions whether investments in compliance programs make sense even for companies caught in a federal criminal investigation. There is little evidence that compliance programs have any significant effect on the likelihood that federal prosecutors will file criminal charges in the first instance. Even more surprisingly, examination of U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics reveals that the compliance program movement seems …
Pour Encourager Les Autres? The Curious History And Distressing Implications Of The Criminal Provisions Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And The Sentencing Guidelines Amendments That Followed, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Pour Encourager Les Autres? The Curious History And Distressing Implications Of The Criminal Provisions Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And The Sentencing Guidelines Amendments That Followed, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article presents a legislative history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the subsequent amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. It explains the surprising interaction between the civil and criminal provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. The Article also provides a dramatic and detailed account of the interplay of political interests and agendas that ultimately led to large sentence increases for serious corporate criminals and blanket sentence increases for virtually all federal fraud defendants. The tale illuminates the substance of the new legislation and sentencing rules, but is more broadly instructive regarding the distribution of power over criminal sentencing between the three branches and …