DOJ non-prosecution records are target of law librarian's suit - Reuters
REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
(Reuters) - A lawsuit in Washington, D.C., federal court seeks greater public access to non-prosecution agreements between the U.S. Justice Department and corporations that have faced misconduct allegations.
The public records complaint filed on Friday asks a court to force the Justice Department to release 12 case files from 2015 and 2019 in which the government signed non-prosecution agreements with an array of corporate defendants. The complaint also demanded a list of all corporate non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements since 2009.
Non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements are pre-trial alternatives to resolving alleged corporate misconduct. They often require a corporation's voluntary and substantial cooperation with prosecutors, in addition to a company's move to implement remedial measures addressing underlying misconduct. Non-prosecution agreements are not formally filed in court.
Plaintiff Jonathan Ashley, a business reference librarian at University of Virginia School of Law, created the Corporate Prosecution Registry website in 2017 with law professor Brandon Garrett, now at Duke University School of Law.
The registry is home to more than 350 non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements that the scholars acquired from Justice Department press releases and earlier public-records litigation.
The lawsuit seeks DOJ agreements with companies including Redflex Traffic Systems Inc, Unitrans International Inc and Waste Management of Texas Inc. Messages left with the companies seeking comment were not immediately returned.
"The public must be permitted to scrutinize these agreements that the government makes with major corporations in lieu of prosecution," Ashley and one of his lawyers, Lin Weeks of the University of Virginia School of Law First Amendment Clinic, told Reuters in a joint statement.
A Justice Department representative on Monday declined to comment.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in a July report said the new Biden administration had "not detoured the institutional momentum of the use of non-prosecution agreements and deferred prosecution agreements" in the first half of the year. The firm said 18 such agreements had been executed by mid-July, mirroring other mid-year tallies.
The case is Ashley v. U.S. Justice Department, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 1:21-cv-02923.
For the plaintiffs: Gabe Rottman and Lin Weeks of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
For defendant: No appearance yet
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source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/doj-non-prosecution-records-are-target-law-librarians-suit-2021-11-08/
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