Multi-Jurisdictional and Successive Prosecution of Environmental Crimes: The Case for a Consistent Approach

Abstract

One of the most important policy issues facing the federal environmental criminal enforcement program is how the Department of Justice (Department) should coordinate the prosecution of corporations for violations of law that occur in several judicial districts and thus fall within the jurisdiction of multiple United States Attorneys. The pattern of prosecutions in the multi-district cases of the last decade demonstrates that in some cases, the standing Department policy governing successive prosecutions has not been followed, resulting in a substantial waste of scarce prosecutorial resources and unfairness to corporate defendants. In important corporate criminal cases outside the environmental area, such as the highly visible prosecutions against Enron and WorldCom coordinated by the Department's Corporate Fraud Task Force,1 all crimes against the company have been charged in a single corporate prosecution. This Article examines whether there are features of environmental criminal