Ten of those suspects were arrested and detained this week, after being charged with money laundering and participation in a criminal organization — offenses that warrant fast-track prosecution.
"The corporate crime defense bar has this down to a science," said Russell Mokhiber, the editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, a publication that tracks prosecutions.
The large numbers of fast-track prosecutions represent a substantial extra expense, but the program's supporters say it generally targets foreigners with serious criminal records who are likely to commit more crimes.
He conceded that crime rates have been declining around the country, but he said he said he believed that the fast-track prosecutions had been a major contributing factor.
Sergeant Bales's lead lawyer, John Henry Browne, called the Army's decision to move ahead on what appears to be a fast track of prosecution "understandable but totally irresponsible".
From there he hopes that regulators and watchdog groups can fund and pursue more aggressive tracking and prosecution policies to wipe detrimental products out of the market faster and make the business costly for no-goodniks.
"The degree to which the government seems to have led on the defendants is much more aggressive than we have seen in other cases," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, which tracks terrorism prosecutions.
This was set up recently in an attempt to fast track wildlife crime prosecutions and bypass local courts that were seen as more susceptible to bribery.
The rest of the accused went on trial in a fast-track court; the prosecution finished presenting its evidence on 8 July 2013.
Sessions' information on Oregon's 'regulatory structures", Brown insisted in her letter, doesn't reflect the reality of what's happening on the ground, as the state has passed recent measures like digital "seed-to-sale" tracking and easier prosecution of illegal weed exporters.
Former prosecutors said that though Judge Kaye lacked a track record of making prosecution decisions herself, her career on the state's highest court and, before that, as a litigator in civil cases, provided her with many of the skills needed to navigate not only the management but also the political sensitivities of the investigation.
