Criminal Statutory Liability and Interpretation

Abstract

Abstract Criminal laws creating substantive criminal liability that are most frequently used in corporate prosecutions fall into two broad categories: Those contained in the Federal Criminal Code, known as Title 18 offenses, and those contained in subject specific regulatory statutes. It would be impractical to enumerate all potentially applicable federal criminal offenses. As of 2004, there were approximately 4,000 separate criminal offenses covering approximately 27,000 pages of the United States Code. With such a vast array of criminal statutes, it is not difficult for a smart prosecutor to find an offense that can be charged to fit the facts where there has been illicit activity. The federal criminal code has been critically described as “simply an ‘incomprehensible,’ random and incoherent, ‘duplicative, incomplete, and organizationally nonsensical’ mass of federal legislation that carries criminal penalties.”