Trapped: When Acting Ethically is Against the Law - John Hasnas

Publisher: CATO Institute

Release: March 2006

Trapped by John Hasnas examines the evolution of court rulings and laws that allow prosecutors to circumvent the personal rights of defendants. He uses the 1906 case of Hale v. Henkel as his jumping off point to discuss the state of corporations under law. Prior to 1906, a corporation could not be criminally liable for any action because corporations were not viewed as entities. It was the outcome of Hale v Henkel that allowed corporations to be viewed as beings and thus could be charged with criminal intent. The courts did not, however, revisit the rights granted to individuals and so the Fifth Amendment was never applied to corporations. Hasnas outlines neatly how a prosecutor could easily force self-incrimination upon an individual without any roadblocks from the Fifth Amendment. He also discusses how broad statutes allow the indictment of high-profile executives who publicly declare their innocence of offenses they are not charged with based upon said claims of innocence.

In the second section of his book, Hasnas explains how white-collar crime laws force businesses to make unethical decisions. If your assistant is being charged with a white-collar crime and you are certain of his innocence, what would you do? Ethics dictates that you would defend your employee and even aid him with legal fees; however, the law makes this illegal. As a manager you must decide to help your employee, or to help your stock-holders. If you aid your innocent employee, you risk the entire firm because any affiliation with the employee is considered obstruction of justice. Instead, as a manager, you must fire your loyal employee and help prosecutors convict him even if you are certain of his innocence.

Hasnas concludes that ethics and compliance do not co-exit in the realm of white-collar laws. His book reads like college level political science text, but is filled with information if the reader is patient. I suppose this book would work best as an assigned reader in a college level course, and it would be a great addition to the libraries of the politically inclined. I consider myself a bit more politically 'aware' than the 'average' Joe and this book made sense to me, especially when I applied the examples to real world encounters(such as the Anonymous tip lines corporations provide for their employees). This book will shatter the security of anyone who believes they can report corruption with the protection of anonymity.