Denying the Guilty Mind White-Collar Crime · Crime Lab 5 · Midwestern State University

Your coding, summarized

The rule this gives you for the case project. A statement made at sentencing, in testimony, or to a reporter is evidence that an account exists and evidence of what the speaker expected the audience to accept. It is evidence of a neutralization that preceded the act only when something written at the time corroborates it: an email, a memo, a ledger entry, a hotline call log, a board minute. When you write Part 2, the verb rule applies to these statements exactly as it applies to charges. The defendant says she believed it would end shortly. The sentencing memorandum argues that he acted under compulsion. Only a contemporaneous document lets you write that the person believed anything at the time.

Antitrust (4 offenders, one bid-rigging case). Everyday business practice with a long history ("It was a way of doing business before we even got into the business"); a "technical violation" done for harmless reasons; prosecutors motivated by ambition and politics; and an explicit contrast with street crime, whose victims are identifiable and whose acts have a beginning and an end (pp. 591-593). Benson notes that antitrust offenders can point to the "checkered history of antitrust litigation," which waxes and wanes with administrations, as evidence that the conduct was never customarily wrong (p. 602).

Tax (6 offenders). "Everybody cheats on their income tax, 95% of the people," combined with mistakes, ignorance, and poor recordkeeping ("My records were strictly one big mess"), and in one case altruism toward employees. None denied the legitimacy of the tax laws; all denied intending to victimize the government (pp. 594-595).

Violations of financial trust (4 offenders: three bank officers, one union official). The only group that said "What I did was wrong, was criminal, and I knew it was." Because embezzlement "requires deliberate action" and "is almost inevitably committed for personal reasons," it cannot be excused as technical or as industry practice. The remaining route is extraordinary circumstances that make the act an aberration in an otherwise clean life (pp. 595-596). Benson connects this to the finding that judges treat embezzlers' accounts as more sufficient than other offenders' (p. 596).

Fraud and false statements (10 offenders). Seven of the ten denied committing any crime, while admitting that a fraud had occurred; they had been set up by associates and wrongly convicted by the U.S. Attorney. Benson calls this the scapegoat strategy, and explains it by the structure of the offense: "it is difficult to imagine how one could accidentally mislead someone else for his or her own good," and a large scheme cannot be presented as a desperate solution to a personal problem, so the only way to keep a noncriminal identity is to deny involvement altogether (pp. 596-597, 602).

What this means for your coding. If the account is selected by the offense, then the statements you coded on the previous tabs tell you about the position the speaker was in, not only about the speaker. A fraud defendant who admits the fraud has almost no account left except necessity; one who is still contesting the charge has only complete denial and condemnation of the condemners. Expect the accounts in your case project to follow the charge sheet.

Defense of necessity: 7 women, 1 man. Women more often said they had no choice, and framed the loyalty as caretaking, frequently for a household without a reliable male provider. Men framed the same loyalty as providing, and more often added that no one was really hurt (they were "only borrowing," 10 men), that competitors did the same thing (8 men), and that the government was hypocritical or the law unreasonable (7 men). Women who denied responsibility pointed to inadequate direction from a superior rather than to their own limits. The authors' reading is that both groups drew on gendered themes to align the crime with what is expected of a man or a woman, and that the accounts tell you about those expectations as much as about the crimes.

Put the two studies together. Benson says the offense selects the account. Klenowski and colleagues say the speaker's position in a gender order selects it too. Neither study can tell you whether the account preceded the act. All three points bear on your case: the statements in your documents were shaped by the charge, by who the speaker was expected to be, and by the audience in the room.

Source: Klenowski, Copes, and Mullins (2011), Justice Quarterly 28(1), 46-69, sample and coding as reported in the article. Counts are the number of interviewees who used each technique at least once.