Deferred Prosecution Agreements and the Presumption of Innocence

Criminal Law and Philosophy 12 (4):707-723 (2018)
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Abstract

A deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, allows a corporation, instead of proceeding to trial on a criminal charge, to settle matters with the state by acknowledging the facts on which any charge would be based, pay a reduced fine, and agree to change the way they conduct business. Critics of DPAs have suggested that, because the defendant corporation must pay a fine and submit to structural reform without having been found guilty at trial, DPAs violate the Presumption of Innocence. This paper argues that they do not. The paper appeals to the role of civic trust in a liberal political community. The obligations a corporation assumes in a DPA can be framed as a reasonable retributive response to a breach by that corporation of the community’s laws, and an appropriate reassurance by that corporation to the community that such breaches will not reoccur. This framing is sufficient to deny that DPAs violate the Presumption of Innocence.

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References found in this work

Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - New York: Basic Books.
Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - Philosophy 52 (199):102-105.
Must we mean what we say?Stanley Cavell - 1964 - In Vere Claiborne Chappell (ed.), Ordinary language: essays in philosophical method. New York: Dover Publications. pp. 172 – 212.

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