Chastening the Prosecutor's Darlings? SCOTUS To Assess 'Right-To-Control' and Honest Services Fraud
In 'Ciminelli' and 'Percoco', the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to further limit prosecutors' use of unduly broad interpretations of the federal fraud laws to impose their own notions of an integrity code onto state government and many other arenas beyond their proper reach.
August 10, 2022 at 11:45 AM
13 minute read
Federal courts long have struggled to define the limits of the mail and wire fraud statutes, laws famously characterized as the prosecutor's true love for their vast breadth and catch-all adaptability. After sidestepping opportunities in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court is now wading into two different and controversial manifestations of that flexibility. The first, which has proved particularly useful to Second Circuit prosecutors in recent years, is the "right-to-control" theory. This approach treats the deprivation of complete and accurate information bearing on a person's economic decision as a species of property fraud. Critics have focused on this theory because it allows federal prosecution of a broad range of conduct that may be unsavory or deceptive—like violating NCAA recruiting rules, lying in an employment application or retaliating against a political rival by closing entrance lanes to a busy bridge—but which does not contemplate the concrete economic harm at which fraud statutes are aimed. The second is a line of cases based on the Second Circuit's 1982 decision upholding the conviction of the former Republican leader in Nassau County, Joseph Margiotta, holding that a private citizen who has informal influence over government decision making can be convicted of honest services fraud.
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