In his native Brazil, Spencer Toth Sydow teaches law in six institutions, is pursuing a doctoral degree, and maintains a law practice and a legal blog. His particular interest is in Internet criminal law, a field in which he’s already well known.
Now, as a visiting scholar in SUNY Buffalo Law School’s program in comparative criminal law, he’s spending six months in that idea-rich environment – doing intensive research and working closely with Professor Luis E. Chiesa, vice dean for academic affairs and director of the Buffalo Criminal Law Center.
A recommendation by one of two major professors researching his scholarly topic – how the willful blindness doctrine can be applied – led him to seek out Chiesa. The Criminal Law Center’s focus on finding common ground between the common and civil law traditions also helped tip the scales in favor of a stint in Buffalo.
What piqued his interest, Sydow says, was a recent case in Brazil that resulted in convictions for high-profile judges and politicians on charges of corruption and money laundering. Prosecutors in that case cited the doctrine of willful blindness, in which a defendant turns a blind eye to facts that would render him legally liable. A common example is that of a defendant caught smuggling drugs in a sealed box, who then claims innocence because he never asked what was in the box.
Traditionally, he says, the Brazilian civil or continental law tradition has taken a legalistic approach, requiring that “you cannot be convicted if every single word that is in the law is not perfectly fit to the crime.” In the corruption case, however, prosecutors “took this theory and expanded the way they interpret the law. That is very American; you just have to fit the meaning of the law” in order to obtain a conviction.
Sydow is concerned about this development in the Brazilian legal tradition, partly because of the great power that already rests with judges in that country. “Our judges are very authoritarian, almost untouchable,” he says. “Here in the U.S., judges are elected; there they are appointed for life. There is no way you can put them out. Because of that much power in the hands of a single judge, they abuse their power a lot.” If judges are able to apply the willful blindness doctrine with impunity, he says, that power will go unchecked, and “that scares me.”
His doctoral thesis will address the willful blindness doctrine and how it can be applied to Internet criminal law. Given the rapid evolution of digital technologies and the slipperiness of Internet criminals, it’s a moving target. Sydow cites the example of a cloud hosting site through which a whole lot of illegal materials passed, including files related to racketeering, money laundering, child pornography and the theft of intellectual property. Investigators charged the site’s owner with abetting these crimes, saying he should have known the files pointed to criminal conduct. After he served a prison sentence, he re-established the site under a new name and arranged it so that every file would automatically be encrypted with 256-bit cryptography, pretty much impervious to decoding. Does such willful blindness to the possibility of criminality, Sydow asks, insulate the site owner from liability?
Beyond his research, Sydow will attend some classes and watch how various professors teach law. In addition, he will deliver some lectures in Brazil by video hookup.
Sydow and his wife, Marcelle, who is with him in Buffalo, are newlyweds.
