This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 4, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In federal law, the term honest services is extremely vague.

That may be just how prosecutors like it, but the Supreme Court

is weighing in on whether a prohibition on honest services fraud invites selective prosecution.

Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on

criminal justice, weighs in. Years ago it became, I guess, fashionable for

prosecutors to throw conspiracy charges at people that they couldn't

actually catch committing the crime that they thought they initially had them

nailed on. Martha Stewart being the best example of that.

This honest services statute seems to be, well,

we can't actually get you committing fraud,

but we think we can get you

depriving someone of

quote-unquote honest services.

That's basically right.

I mean, it's sometimes described as an anti-fraud law but the thing to

keep in mind is that we already have laws against bribery and the straight up laws

about corruption but sometimes the federal prosecutors tend to turn towards vague

statutes.

Sometimes it's male fraud, wire fraud, and then the most popular one in recent years is this honest services fraud law.

And whenever you hear prosecutors, you know, bringing honest services fraud or mail or wire fraud,

...