Last February I interviewed a man named Timothy Crosby, who also was sent to prison following a prosecution based on a Dana Garner fantasy.
Hopes of a prosecution based on the most serious charges, such as manslaughter, may be helped by cooperation from police in China.
After the case had finished, I went home and mentally re-ran the trial, this time with a prosecution based on a perfect police investigation, and wondered whether our verdict would have been any different.
(The possibility of a prosecution based on an "anything-of-value" theory has been explored in greater detail by Robert Bauer, President Obama's White House counsel, and by Rick Hasen, an election-law specialist, in several posts).
The question of why the US justice department is piggybacking on Landis' suit now, when a US attorney in California inexplicably nixed a prosecution based on the federal grand jury investigation into precisely the same charges of fraud is now mainly of academic interest.
That could be the basis for a prosecution based on negligence ― failing to uphold the law without actually trying to break it.
Entrapment is unlawful in this country, so any such prosecution based on these tactics would be thrown out of English courts.
Nor is there any suggestion that the government targeted Mr. Swartz for prosecution based on personal or political reasons, or as part of a vendetta against political foes, as in the horrendously unfair federal prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
With no cause of death, no witnesses and no murder weapon, Mr. Distaso spent his day laying out a circumstantial case against Mr. Peterson that one lawyer friendly to his cause characterized as a double-themed prosecution based on Mr. Peterson's "secrets and lies".
The justices ruled that the law, which makes it a crime "to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services," could not be used to prosecute defendants for hiding conflicts of interest, but left open the possibility of prosecution based on kickbacks and bribery.
