By Sara Kropf Note: A similar version of this article was also published in Law360. When the Department of Justice indicts a defendant or prevails at trial, the Office of Public Affairs issues a press release. Those press releases tout the seriousness of the charged...
Oh Goody! Another DOJ “Cooperation” Program—This Time, It’s All About the $$$
By Sara Kropf It has become a running joke among the defense lawyers I know that we can’t wait to see what the Department of Justice will announce as its newest “cooperation” policy at the annual ABA White Collar Crime conference. The ABA conference is the largest of...
Location, Location, Location – DOJ Fails to Meet the Low Standard for Venue in Criminal Cases
By Sara Kropf Where the government indicts someone affects a host of key elements of a criminal case: How quickly the defense team will obtain key pretrial discovery; the composition of the jury pool; the speed of the trial; and likely outcomes for sentencing. In...
How Can Plea Agreements in White Collar Criminal Cases Be “Knowing” When the Government Does Not Disclose Exculpatory Evidence Under Brady?
By Sara Kropf When 98% of federal criminal cases are resolved by plea agreements, you may expect that courts would fiercely protect defendants’ constitutional rights during the plea bargaining stage. Nothing could be further from reality. In fact, the Supreme Court...
DOJ’s Increased Focus on Criminal Trade Secrets Cases
By Rebecca Guiterman Trade secrets cases are on the rise. Most often, they happen when an employee steals confidential computer code or client lists or marketing plans. You may think of them as disputes between employers and employees (or, in one instance, by a...
I Didn’t Have “Media Stories about Protective Orders” on This Year’s Bingo Card
By Sara Kropf Protective orders in criminal cases are . . . . typical. Boring, even. (Are you really going to read a blog post about protective orders?) But even the most mundane procedural matters seem to take on outsized importance when they arise in the criminal...
A Moth to a Flame: No-Contact Orders and Early Jencks in the Trump Case
By Sara Kropf In case you’ve been living under a rock recently, former President Donald Trump was indicted on 37 federal criminal charges relating to classified documents and obstruction of justice. I’m not going to deny that I enjoy this spectacle in many respects,...
DOJ Says Incomplete 302s Resulted from an “Inadvertent Failure of Process”: The Irony(!) and the Uncurable Prejudice of a Retrial
By Sara Kropf When a regular person does something wrong, the Department of Justice has no qualms about bringing criminal charges against him. When the Department of Justice does something wrong, well, it asks for a second chance. A few years ago, I wrote about...
DOJ’s Outsourcing of Investigations Under Fire (Again)
By Sara Kropf The Department of Justice repeatedly issues guidance to beg coerce encourage companies to self-report wrongdoing and, in effect, sell out their executives as the wrongdoers. As part of this “cooperation,” companies will conduct an internal investigation,...
Surprise Arrests and Scheduled Arrests – Or, Why Donald Trump Knows His Arrest Date (Updated)
By Sara Kropf UPDATE 4.1.2023 (not an April Fool's joke): The media has reported that Donald Trump will be formally arrested in New York on April 4, 2023. For folks who watch lots of crime procedural dramas, you may be disappointed to learn that most people accused of...