Email, Twitter, Faceboook - Not the Lock and Key of White Collar Crime

White collar crime can be a difficult area of defense for general criminal attorneys -- this is one of the reasons that you'll find specialists in the area. Much of the evidence in white collar crime relates to intent or knowledge, which can only be proven with recordings of conversations, letters, and witness accounts of relayed information. Increasingly, electronic methods of recording information are subject to scrutiny in criminal trials; these might include emails, or even ephemeral methods of relaying information such as Twitter and Facebook. However, it seems that prosecutors are not set to have the success that they expected by seizing email records; a recent case explains the precedent win for criminal attorneys.

The Bear Sterns Verdict and Impact

Two hedge fund managers at Bear Sterns were recently found not guilty on all of their fraud charges. The prosecution case was that they had lied to investors, informing them that the prospects seemed optimistic in order to prevent them from pulling out their funding, when in reality they were close to spent.

Obviously, some key aspects of the case to be argued over by criminal attorneys would include whether the defendants were in fact optimistic about the fund's future or not; and whether their comments to investors were an accurate representation of their feelings. Without the widespread ability to record a person's thoughts at every second of the day, prosecutors are turning to expressions of thought in forms like email to help prove their case.

Is Email the Lock and Key of White Collar Crime?

This is where a jury of a person's peers plays such a key role in determining the apportionment of justice. Some of the defendant's emails may have indicated some level of doubt about the viability of the hedge fund. However, the jurors understood that not every email represents the entire truth, nor does it necessarily equate to a balanced and measured view of reality or a cross-section of the defendant's brain at any particular time.

Expert white collar criminal attorneys will be paying a lot of attention to this case, and using the finding for their own defendants in the future.

Are Criminal Lawyers' Clients Pressured into Pleading Guilty by Plea Bargains?

In a recent criminal trial, Judge Cormac Carney actually voided a guilty plea. As incredible as it sounds, although the defendant had actually said "Yes, I committed the crime and am willing to be punished for it," when the judge reviewed the facts of the case, he believed further investigation was needed. Today we are exploring why this might happen, and the challenges for criminal attorneys and their clients in deciding whether to take a plea bargain or to fight unfair charges.

What is a Plea Bargain?

In a plea bargain, the prosecutor offers some sort of benefits to an alleged criminal, in exchange for them pleading guilty. Much as to outsiders, this seems to flaunt the idea of justice (after all, shouldn’t people simply receive a sentence fit for their crime?), if every criminal case went to trial the court system would effectively be crippled.

In some cases, plea bargains might involve a reduced sentence. In other cases the charge is downgraded, from burglary to attempted burglary, for example.

The Real Controversy

There is controversy among law scholars, the general public and criminal lawyers as to whether plea bargains should even exist. We mentioned earlier that they seem a naturally unjust way to work, favoring practicality over true justice. But the issues run deeper than the simple possibility of letting some criminals out of prison before society believes they should be, as we can see from a real life case.

A Recent, Real Life Case

In a recent, real life case with criminal attorney Gordon Greenberg and former Broadcom founder and defendant Henry Samueli, the defendant entered a guilty plea which was reversed by the judge. The plea bargain was signed by Samueli on the understanding that he believed he had broken the law. However, this belief was based on a distortion of evidence by the prosecuting attorneys. Samueli's criminal lawyer may have advised him of this, or he may have only had access to the prosecutor's evidence.

What can be done about the situation? A plea bargain can sometimes make good sense for a defendant -- but there are plenty of gray areas that exist. Choose a criminal attorney who is a true expert in the crime field you have been charged with, and listen to their advice to avoid ending up a victim of the plea bargain system.