My reading of
this NY Times article about the Tyco trial (free registration probably required) boggles my mind.
On the second day of deliberations, the jury asked the judge a question - which some spectators think was prompted by Juror No. 4 - that showed possible confusion about how to treat criminal intent. "If we find that an action is a crime,'' they asked, "and we find that the defendant, at the time, believes it was not a crime, but that a reasonable person in that situation should have known it was a crime, can a jury find that the defendant has acted with criminal intent?"
The next day, Justice Michael J. Obus of State Supreme Court in Manhattan instructed the jury: "A defendant is not guilty of larceny if he actually believed that he had authority to take the property. That is another way of saying that the defendant acted in good faith, that is, if he actually believed he was authorized to take the property. If that is the case, then he's not guilty of larceny."
So to get away with the crime, all you have to do is think real hard that it's not a crime and poof, you are safe. It's actually a job skill for a CEO to be bereft of scruples.
