The New York Times, April 12, 2008, Saturday
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
April 12, 2008 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTERS; Pg. 18
BODY:
To the Editor:
Re ''In Justice Shift, Corporate Deals Replace Trials'' (front page, April 9):
Using deferred prosecution agreements as an alternative to charging companies with crimes is not a ''major shift of policy'' for a Justice Department ''once known for taking down giant corporations.''
The prosecution of Arthur Andersen was a rare exception -- and came about only after discussions about a possible deferred prosecution broke down.
The real problem is that companies can be prosecuted if a single employee commits a single wrongful act, even if the company has done everything it can to prevent misconduct. This gives prosecutors enormous leverage over a company, leaving the company little choice but to accept a deferred prosecution agreement as an alternative to a potentially fatal criminal prosecution.
With these agreements, prosecutors can get what they want from a company -- fines, changes in management, monitors and other sanctions -- without ever having to prove their case in court.
Alan Vinegrad New York, April 9, 2008
The writer, a corporate lawyer, was the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 2001-2002 and a member of President Bush's corporate fraud task force.
To the Editor:
Your article says John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, defended deferred prosecutions at a Congressional hearing, saying ''a deferred prosecution can avoid the catastrophic collateral consequences'' of corporate conviction.
If a young father shoots and kills someone on the street and is sentenced to life in prison, it is catastrophic for his family and children. But we'd never argue that he should go free for that reason; otherwise, people would feel that having a family protected them from prosecution.
But now we are telling corporate entities that if they commit crimes, they won't have to face a trial because their conviction would be too devastating. Why aren't they made to understand that breaking laws is what brings catastrophic results? Why has the process of justice become the villain?
Casual attention to the law leads to corruption, and a corrupt society is truly catastrophic. We cannot afford to become one.
Jennie Kaufman Brooklyn, April 9, 2008
To the Editor:
As you note in ''Going Soft on Corporate Crime'' (editorial, April 10), deferred prosecution agreements are a weak deterrent to corporate crime. One reason they are unlikely to deter misbehavior is that they often go unreported in the press.
According to organizational research, the most significant deterrent to corporate crime is publicity. Chief executives value being seen as upright, respectable members of the community, if only to justify their outsize salaries. They fear most being labeled ''criminals'' in the press and having their reputations soiled.
Remember Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay? Overnight they went from being paragons of the community to pariahs.
To deter corporate crime, we need to hold chief executives accountable in the press for the misbehavior of the corporations they lead. After all, this is why they make the big bucks. Right?
William Sonnenstuhl Ithaca, N.Y., April 10, 2008
The writer teaches organizational behavior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University.
To the Editor:
Just search on Google for the words ''without admitting wrongdoing'' and you will find plenty of corporate miscreants who ended investigations by paying fines. Of course corporations consider those fines a cost of doing business, but they are really a hidden tax passed on to consumers.
The Bush philosophy of less regulation and fewer investigations has gotten us into a real estate mess that has the government arranging the bailout of Wall Street and could be the tipping point to disaster.
If our elected representatives can't step up regulation and enforcement, voters need new elected representatives who will represent those of us who are not part of the corporate elite.
Richard Dickinson Glendale, Calif., April 10, 2008
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: April 12, 2008
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