NACDL

It appears that since the post-Enron scandal, prosecutors have become more sensitive to financial crimes. Many of the district attorney’s offices may not necessarily handle white collar crime cases that involve the same level of complexity as the Enron case, but even straightforward employee embezzlement cases that a typical district attorney’s office may handle can be a challenge to defense counsel. Although public defenders and the private defense bar handle a full range of crimes, the experience of defending white collar criminals can be dramatically different from non-white collar crimes.

Defense counsel may be overwhelmed with the quantity of financial paperwork that the prosecution might produce, especially if counsel deals more in the narcotics, violent and property crime genre. There is a lack of state statutory and case law guidance on white collar crime issues concerning discovery matters assisting both the defense and the prosecution in understan