I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.
This previous post reported on Richard A. Epstein‘s WSJ ($) op-ed that addressed a common topic of this blog — that is, the improper use of deferred prosecution agreements by prosecutors to blackmail companies into agreeing to absurd fines and “corrective” measures to avoid being prosecuted out of business.
In the op-ed, Professor Epstein used as an example the recent conduct of the US Attorney for New Jersey. The US Attorney forced Bristol-Meyers to endow a chair of “ethics” at the US Attorney’s alma mater, Seton Hall Law School, as a condition to granting a deferred prosecution agreement settlement to the company over criminal charges. Apparently, in the US Attorney’s world view, the ends of endowing an ethics chair justifies the means of utilizing dubious ethics in arranging the endowment.
Normally, you would think that the publicity surrounding such an arrangement would at least raise some ethical concerns at Seton Hall. Instead, the Seton Hall Dean used this WSJ letter-to-the-editor ($) to respond to Epstein’s disclosure of the questionable arrangement and brag about Seton Hall’s ethics program. He doesn’t even address the school’s problematic ethics in accepting the endowment from a company that was coerced to pay it by a federal prosecutor!
H’mm. I wonder if the Seton Hall Dean would have had a problem if he knew that the alum’s source of funding for his “ethics” program had come from a kickback or ransom paid to the alum? On second thought, his letter answers that question.