The Plea Bargaining Blog

According to multiple sources, including CBS News , Johns Edwards was offered a misdemeanor plea deal before prosecutors indicted him last week for soliciting and spending more than $925,000 to hide his mistress and baby from the public during his 2008 presidential bid. According to CBS News: John Edwards was on the verge of accepting a plea deal, according to reports, from federal prosecutors who last week charged him of using more than $900,000 in campaign contributions to keep his pregnant mistress out of sight during his 2008 run for president. Just before Edwards was indicted Friday, prosecutors gave him a chance to plead guilty to just three misdemeanor charges, the Raleigh News and Observer reports, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the investigation. The deal likely would have allowed the former Democratic vice presidential nominee to keep his law license, but he would have had to serve up to six months in prison. CBS affiliate WRAL News reported the same details of...

According to Fox News , the Obama administration has decided to take a "cut-the-head-off-the-snake" approach to federal corporate crime. Federal officials has revealed that they will move to punish individual executives and employees more often when crimes occur within corporations. Thus far, this strategy of increased punishment of individuals, instead of just the corporations, has focused on health care fraud and immigration violations. As for health care, federal investigators have opened the door to go after executives for alleged crimes within their company hierarchies. In one prominent case, the health department's inspector general in April notified the CEO of Forest Laboratories that it was considering barring him from doing business with federal health programs. The reason? A subsidiary of his pharmaceutical firm had pleaded guilty to charges that it defied federal warnings not to distribute an unapproved drug and improperly promoted another drug to children. But...

The New York Times this week published an interesting article examining the government's response to the financial crisis and those who brought the economy to the brink. Of particular focus, the article examines how it is possible that the only person at Goldman Sachs sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling mortgage-securities investments is a 28 year-old mid-level executive named Fabrice Tourre. At the height of the housing boom, the 26th floor of Goldman Sachs’s former headquarters on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan was the nerve center of Goldman’s fast-growing mortgage trading business. Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies. At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even...

According to CNN , Phillip Garrido was sentenced Thursday to 431 years to life in prison for the kidnapping and sexual assault of Jaycee Dugard. Dugard was held captive by Garrido and his wife from age 11 to 29. Garrido's wife was sentenced to 36 years to life in prison for her role in the abduction. Both defendants previously pleaded guilty and waived their rights to appeal. The Garridos, a married couple, pleaded guilty in late April in El Dorado County Superior Court to charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. Dugard was abducted from the street in front of her home in South Lake Tahoe, California, in 1991. Authorities found her in 2009. During those years, the Garridos held Dugard in a hidden compound on their home's grounds in Antioch, California. She bore two daughters, fathered by Phillip Garrido. Dugard's written statement, presented during Phillip Garrido's sentencing, was lengthy. "I chose not to be here today because I refuse to waste another second of ...