Russell Mokhiber has been reporting on white collar crime for many years via his weekly Corporate Crime Reporter. Recently, the CCR rated America's top prosecutors, based on "a survey of major corporate crime prosecutions over the last year." The list and associated comments are quite interesting:

“The vast majority of state and federal prosecutors don’t have the resources, staff, energy, perspective, know-how, legal authority, and – perhaps most importantly – political drive needed to bring major corporate crime prosecutions,” said Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter. “The overwhelming number of prosecutors in the country look at the obstacles and say – I’ll pass. But these ten prosecutors have what it takes to tackle the problem.”

“The prosecutors who enter this field need an added element – a finely tuned sense of political and prosecutorial discretion – knowing when to go and when to stop, so as not to offend the powers that be,” Mokhiber said. “If things go right, prosecutors use the publicity they gain from these prosecutions to fuel their ongoing quest for higher office. If things go wrong, as they can easily and often do, these prosecutors will be publically humiliated in the courtroom by high-priced white collar crime defense attorneys and in the court of public opinion by the business press and political rivals.”

The top prosecutors (in alphabetical order) are:

Christopher Christie, U.S. Attorney, New Jersey
James Comey, Deputy Attorney General, Justice Department, Washington, D.C.
Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney, Chicago
David Kelley, U.S. Attorney, Manhattan
Alice Martin, U.S. Attorney, Birmingham, Alabama

Patrick Meehan, U.S. Attorney, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney, Manhattan
Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General, New York
Michael Sullivan, U.S. Attorney, Boston, Massachusetts
Debra Yang, U.S. Attorney, Los Angeles, California.

The prosecutors were chosen for their consistent emphasis on high profile corporate and white collar crime cases.

Check out the full article at CCR for the line by line profile on each candidate. Tip of the hat to a Daily Caveat favorite, the excellent White Collar Crime Prof Blog (Read Ellen Pogdor's comments on the CCR list here).

-- MDT

Labels: Department of Justice, Eliot Spitzer, New York AG, Quest