Enforcement of Environmental Crimes from the Prosecution and Defense Perspective
With a new presidential administration with explicitly different environmental priorities, and a new Pennsylvania Attorney General whose enforcement action in the environmental context has yet to unfold, the regulated public can still rely on many predictable aspects of environmental criminal prosecution in Pennsylvania—a jurisdiction that has been active in recent years in investigating and prosecuting environmental crime. The session will include an overview of the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General’s Environmental Crimes Section, relevant environmental statutes that in some cases have strict liability components, the likely future of “environmental justice,” notable case developments, and recent academic articles advocating energetic enforcement of general criminal statutes for environmental prosecution (including even homicide). The panel will also discuss a hypothetical grand jury investigation from start to finish from both the prosecution and defense perspectives.
