Proposals to Reform the Federal Money Laundering Statutes
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Notwithstanding the enactment of § 1957(f)(1), the Department of Justice has maintained the
position that it could prosecute lawyers for receiving and depositing bona fide legal fees. 30 Moreover,
after noting that the Supreme Court, in civil forfeiture cases, had found no Sixth Amendment right to
use criminally derived property to retain counsel of choice 31 , the authors of the Manual opined that
“ there may be no case in which the payment of legal fees with tainted property may said to be
necessary to preserve the client's right to representation of counsel ” and that, therefore, “ the statutory
exemption for ‘ attorney fee ’ transactions in essence has been vitiated. ” Whatever the Department's
misguided belief about its legal authority to prosecute attorneys under § 1957, it brought no such
cases until very recently. 32
The Department ’ s apparent willingness to charge honest criminal defense lawyers with serious
felony offenses for the receipt and deposit of bona fide legal fees — for arms-length, legitimate and
ethical representation — threatens the very fabric of the adversary system of criminal justice, and
requires clarification of the statute.
The amendment we suggest would return to the original statutory language approved on three
30 See United States Department of Justice, Money Laundering: Federal Prosecution Manual , Ch. 3, p. R88 (1994).
31 See Caplin & Drysdale v. United States, 109 S. Ct. 2646 (1989); United States v. Monsanto, 109 S. Ct. 2657 (1989).
32 See United States v. Ferguson, 142 F. Supp. 1350 (S.D. Fla. 2000).
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