This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 11th, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The BP oil spill has inspired a federal criminal investigation and that may well be warranted,

but the well spewing so much oil in the Gulf has yet to be capped.

Given how the feds treat the alleged crimes of corporations and their agents, it's entirely possible that

lawyering up could hamper communication and delay an end to the disaster.

So says Marie Griffin, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy

and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

The criminal investigation may well be warranted.

Criminal laws may well have been broken and certainly the gruesome magnitude of the

spill in the Gulf right now cannot be overstated.

But beginning a criminal probe right now,

while it may be good press for the administration,

threatens the communication between BP, its own employees,

and agents and the federal government that's so essential to stopping the spill right now.

How does a criminal investigation actually prevent that from occurring?

Well the problem is really that the criminal investigation can result in two types of indictments.

First, investigators at DOJ can choose to indict the corporation itself,

British Petroleum, under the criminal law, but it can also choose to charge

individuals, employees and agents of British Petroleum individually. Now of course you

can't put a corporation itself into jail, So the criminal penalties that British Petroleum

faces would likely be some combination of fines

and federal supervision.

...