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The Quest For Finality: Five Stories Of White Collar Criminal Prosecution, Lucian E. Dervan
The Quest For Finality: Five Stories Of White Collar Criminal Prosecution, Lucian E. Dervan
Law Faculty Scholarship
In this symposium article, Professor Dervan examines the issue of finality and sentencing. In considering this issue, he argues that prosecutors, defendants, and society as a whole are drawn to the concept of finality in various ways during criminal adjudications. Further, far from an aspirational summit, he argues that some outgrowths of this quest for finality could be destructive and, in fact, obstructive to some of the larger goals of our criminal justice system, including the pursuit of truth and the protection of the innocent. Given the potential abstraction of these issues, Professor Dervan decided to discuss the possible consequences …
Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian E. Dervan
Bargained Justice: Plea Bargaining's Innocence Problem And The Brady Safety-Valve, Lucian E. Dervan
Law Faculty Scholarship
If any number of attorneys were asked in 2004 whether Lea Fastow’s plea bargain in the Enron case was constitutional, the majority would respond with a simple word – Brady. Yet while the 1970 Supreme Court decision Brady v. United States authorized plea bargaining as a form of American justice, the case also contained a vital caveat that has been largely overlooked by scholars, practitioners, and courts for almost forty years. Brady contains a safety-valve that caps the amount of pressure that may be asserted against defendants by prohibiting prosecutors from offering incentives in return for guilty pleas that are …