Tag Archives: state prosecutor

How State Prosecutors Can Fill the Gap in U.S. Anticorruption Enforcement

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It’s getting harder to prosecute federal corruption crimes in the United States. In a recent case called Snyder v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the scope of a key anti-bribery law. And this decision is only the latest in a series of cases over the past decade that have limited the reach of federal prosecutors in going after state and local public corruption. While Congress could always enact legislation to expand the scope of federal anticorruption laws, significant legislative action seems unlikely anytime soon.

Given the increasing difficulty of corruption prosecution at the federal level, could state prosecutors step in to pursue cases now beyond the reach of federal law enforcement? After all, federal and state prosecutors share partly overlapping responsibilities for anticorruption enforcement in the United States. Although the Supreme Court has increasingly rejected broad theories of federal criminal liability especially in the context of state and local corruption, the Supreme Court’s narrow readings of federal anticorruption laws pose no barrier to cases brought by state prosecutors enforcing state law (see, for example, here and here). To be sure, federal prosecutors have traditionally played a substantial role in rooting out state and local government corruption, and many remain skeptical that state prosecutors can take up the anticorruption role that federal prosecutors have long played. Yet while state prosecutions might not be a perfect substitute for robust federal anticorruption enforcement, there are compelling reasons to think that state prosecutors could meaningfully fill the gap that the Supreme Court has opened up in the U.S. anticorruption system.

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U.S. State Grand Juries Can Be Powerful Watchdogs. Let’s Put Them To Use (Again).  

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Many commentators in the United States—including a number of GAB contributors—have lamented the lack of robust anticorruption investigations at the state level, and have advocated the creation or strengthening of state-level anticorruption commissions (see, for example, here, here, and here). While there is much to be said for these proposals, the existing commentary often overlooks the fact that states already have a powerful institution with the potential to perform many of the functions that reformers hope to vest with the state commissions. That institution is the state grand jury.

When most people hear the phrase “grand jury,” if they know the term at all, they probably imagine a scene from some TV crime show where a prosecutor endeavors to persuade a group of average citizens to indict someone that the prosecutor believes has committed a crime. And indeed in most states, grand juries’ principal function is to determine whether a state prosecutor has “probable cause” to put a defendant on trial. (After the trial beings, a different jury—the “petit jury”—decides whether the defendant is actually guilty.) But grand juries don’t just evaluate the prosecutor’s evidence at the indictment stage. Grand juries also have robust investigatory powers of their own. Like some state anticorruption commissions, state grand juries have the authority to subpoena documents or other tangible things. But unlike state anticorruption commissions, state grand juries can also compel witnesses to testify, and can hold those who refuse in contempt. (Indeed, while witnesses can invoke their constitutional right against self-incrimination to refuse to testify in a criminal trial, no such right exists in a grand jury investigation.) Moreover, grand juries can not only return criminal indictments (their more familiar function), but grand juries can also issue public reports about unethical and unsavory behavior.

If wielded properly, these immense powers could help unearth evidence of wrongdoing. Moreover, grand juries’ investigative powers may be especially valuable in cases involving corruption. While it might seem radical to propose that grand juries exercise these existing but largely moribund powers to assume the role of anticorruption watchdog, this would in fact be a return to one of the grand juries’ traditional functions.

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