Direct Government Cost
Investigator and prosecutor hours, grand-jury and court time, detention, and related public expenditures.
A Research Initiative of Justice Restoration Foundation
What Does a Failed Federal Prosecution Actually Cost?
Every federal prosecution that ends in acquittal, dismissal, or reversal carries a real economic cost — to the defendant, to the businesses and jobs that disappear, and to the taxpayer who funds both the prosecution and, years later, the settlement.
Our Approach
Conservative, defensible, and built to survive review.
The study builds a single, conservative, defensible dollar figure — assembled from public academic and government data and built to survive hostile review. A smaller number we can defend beats a big one we can’t. It measures cost across four buckets and pairs a bottom-up, per-case method with a top-down macro anchor.
Who’s building it
Nevin Shetty — Author · CPA, CFA · former CFO, Fabric.
Dionne Hutton — Director of Technology & Data and methodology lead.
The Four-Bucket Framework
The study measures cost from every side of the damage.
Direct Defendant Cost
Legal and expert fees, seized or frozen assets, lost wages, reputational damage, and practical disruption.
Economic Ripple
Jobs eliminated, businesses closed, suppliers and customers harmed, and local tax base reduced.
Settlement & Civil Tail
The multimillion-dollar settlements and civil consequences that can be paid years later.
Flagship Cases
Public cases that frame the economic question.
- Arthur Andersen — an 85,000-employee firm destroyed by a conviction reversed 9–0.
- Joseph McDade — an eight-year investigation ending in acquittal that catalyzed the 1997 Hyde Amendment.
- KPMG / U.S. v. Stein — charges dismissed after the government interfered with the right to counsel.
- The Broadview Six — a case ended after grand-jury records showed serious process failures.
By the numbers
< 15
meaningful Hyde awards in approximately 29 years.
97%
of federal convictions by guilty plea.
$6.1M
average monetized cost of a single wrongful conviction in Vanderbilt/Cohen research cited by the Foundation.
The Economic Impact Study is in active development. Findings will be published here and shared with policymakers and the public.