Today's Wall Street Journal Law Blog includes an article about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to review three cases involving "honest services fraud" (click here). According to the article, "[t]he law makes it a crime to deprive someone of 'the intangible right of honest services.' It’s a head scratcher – a vague standard that can seemingly encompass just about any manner of supposed sin." One case involves Jeffrey Skilling, a former Enron executive. The two other cases involve "Conrad Black, the newspaper titan convicted of defrauding his company, Hollinger International," and "Bruce Weyhrauch, a former Alaska legislator, who allegedly failed to disclose . . . conflicting business dealings." The statute at issue is 18 U.S.C. § 1346 (click here).

A New York Times article to which the Law Blog piece links (click here) states, "[i]n its Supreme Court brief in Mr. Black’s case, the government said the honest services law has an important role to play in attacking frauds that do not involve the loss of money or property but something intangible like candor or loyalty." At least one Supreme Court Justice appears to be skeptical of that argument. "The bottom line, Justice Scalia said in February, is that the courts have not been able to define what separates 'the criminal breaches, conflicts and misstatements from the obnoxious but lawful ones.' The honest services law, he said, 'invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate C.E.O.’s who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct.'”

Tags: Supreme Court of the United States, Criminal Law

I've been wondering what, as a practical matter, prompted Roman Polanski's arrest 32 years after he fled the U.S. This article from today's ABA Journal, entitled "Roman Polanski's Lawyers Reportedly Provoked His Arrest" (click here), may provide an answer. The article states that, in a suit filed in a California appeals court to overturn Mr. Polanski's conviction, the lawyers asserted, "'no effort' has been made to extradite Polanski. The filing claimed prosecutors were seeking to benefit by their own inaction by arguing the effort to overturn the plea could not be pursued without Polanski's presence." The assertion "led prosecutors to look for a new opportunity to extradite the director. He was arrested at an airport in Zurich on Saturday as he entered Switzerland to receive an award at a film festival." The story hasn't played out yet, but this may be a situation where Mr. Polanski and his attorneys should have let sleeping dogs lie.

As a side note, it's fascinating how this case has split commentators into two camps, those who think the arrest is warranted (for example, here) and those who think it's not (for example, here). For whatever it's worth, I find it difficult to feel sorry for Mr. Polanski.

Tags: Criminal Law, Appeals