Pesquisas recentes enfatizam a escassez de denúncias contra os responsáveis pelo desenrolar da crise financeira de 2008 nos EUA. Pelo menos um autor, Jed Rakoff, argumentou que as dificuldades encontradas por procuradores federais para processar tais responsáveis poderiam ter sido superadas com a willful blindness doctrine para provar o elemento mental dos altos executivos. Neste artigo, avaliamos esse argumento observando o processo incomum de Gilbert Lundstrom, diretor presidente do TierOne Bank, condenado por conspiracy e fraude após a ruína de seu banco. Constatamos que a willful blindness doctrine foi uma ferramenta poderosa para a acusação superar as negações persistentes de Lundstrom e preencher a lacuna entre materialidade e culpabilidade. Logo, entendemos que as críticas de Rakoff procedem, mas não são desejáveis, tampouco aplicáveis no contexto em que a cegueira deliberada é aplicada no Brasil.
Recent scholarship has emphasized a dearth of prosecutions of those responsible for the unfolding of the financial crisis of 2008. At least one commentator, Jed Rakoff, argued that difficulties encountered by federal prosecutors may have been overcome by employing the willful blindness doctrine as means of proving the mens rea of high-level executives. In this article, we evaluate this argument by looking at the unusual case of Gilbert Lundstrom, the principal of TierOne Bank, who was convicted for conspiracy and fraud after the failure of his bank. We argue that willful blindness was a powerful tool for the prosecution in overcoming Lundstrom’s persistent denials of wrongdoing and a means for the jury to bridge the gap between signs of wrongdoing and Lundstrom’s culpability. Thus, we argue that criticism levied by Rakoff is valid, but not necessarily desirable or equally applicable in the context of the theory’s application in Brazil.
