The NACDL brief supporting Nevin Shetty asks readers to look at a criminal case from a point before the disputed transaction occurred. What conduct did the statute clearly prohibit? Which legal interest did it protect? Could an executive understand the proposed criminal boundary without learning it only through a later prosecution? Those prospective questions give the brief a significance beyond its request for dismissal in one case.
Filed in August 2024, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ amicus brief supported Shetty’s motion to dismiss the indictment. It argued that the prosecution’s theory stretched federal fraud law beyond its proper limits. This was a legal position advanced by a professional association, not a judicial finding that the prosecution was improper or that Shetty had been exonerated.
Begin with the boundary the brief sought to preserve
The brief placed the case within a line of Supreme Court decisions limiting expansive fraud theories. It focused on the need to connect an alleged scheme to the property interest required by the statute, rather than treating every alleged abuse of trust or failure to disclose information as the same offense. Its concern was the definition of the crime before evaluating a particular defendant’s conduct.
For Shetty, the association argued that allegations about an undisclosed financial interest and unwanted investment risk did not establish the necessary property theory. It adopted the defense’s account of his investment authority and challenged the government’s application of the statute. These were contested premises. The brief’s favorable position can be explained without presenting its interpretation of the evidence as an agreed fact.
The distinction matters because an amicus brief works through argument. It may offer a broader perspective, identify consequences of a proposed legal rule or explain an organization’s interest in the issue. It does not take over the court’s role in deciding the case. NACDL asked the judge to adopt its position; the act of filing did not supply the requested result.
Fair warning is a question about timing
The brief’s fair-warning concern asks what a criminal statute communicates before conduct takes place. Its argument was that uncertainty should not be resolved through an expansive interpretation that an affected person could not reasonably identify in advance. The association connected this concern to the difference between federal criminal liability and disputes that may otherwise be addressed through corporate or civil law.
That framing is especially relevant to a case involving internal company rules. A policy can set expectations and distribute responsibilities, but the brief argued that an alleged failure to follow it still has to be connected to the elements of a federal offense. It opposed allowing a contested interpretation of an internal document to perform all of that legal work by itself.
This does not mean that corporate policies cannot be relevant evidence. They can help explain authority, representations and the setting in which a transaction occurred. The amicus’s argument concerns the further step from such evidence to criminal liability. Its central demand was for a clear statutory basis, not simply a conclusion that the conduct was undesirable.
Lenity appears as an alternative argument
The brief then addressed what should happen if uncertainty remained after considering the statute and the authorities. NACDL invoked the rule of lenity and related principles of narrow construction. It argued that unresolved ambiguity should favor a limited reading rather than an expansion of criminal exposure. This supplied an alternative basis for the dismissal it requested.
The alternative structure is worth noticing. The association first argued that existing law already excluded the prosecution’s theory. It then argued that, even if the court saw the question as uncertain, fair warning and lenity supported the defense. Those are related but distinct propositions. One asserts an answer; the other addresses how remaining uncertainty should be treated.
The brief also connected those principles to separation of powers. In its account, Congress defines federal crimes, and an expansive prosecutorial interpretation risks enlarging the offense beyond the enacted statute. That is a policy and interpretive argument about institutional responsibility. It is not a claim that a court had already found an improper motive in Shetty’s prosecution.
Preserve the limits of the authorities
NACDL relied on Ciminelli’s rejection of the right-to-control theory and Skilling’s restriction of honest-services fraud. Those holdings need their proper scope. Ciminelli does not make all deception involving investment decisions legally irrelevant. Skilling does not give an undisclosed financial interest immunity from a properly established property-fraud charge. The brief argued that those limits nevertheless mattered to this indictment.
It also predates Kousisis v. United States, the May 2025 decision allowing fraudulent-inducement liability without an intended net economic loss. A present-day account should not turn the brief’s emphasis on an investment intended to produce returns into a universal defense. The requirement to identify the scheme’s property object remains a different question from whether the transaction was expected to leave the victim economically better off.
A February 2025 HackerNoon commentary discussed the case favorably through investment risk and fraud. Shetty’s own public materials provide his broader account. These sources help locate the debate, while the amicus brief supplies the particular fair-warning and lenity arguments. Their different roles should remain visible.
The dismissal motion was denied in December 2024. A jury convicted Shetty on four wire-fraud counts in November 2025, and he was sentenced to two years in prison in March 2026. The amicus did not secure the result it requested. Its contribution to understanding his defense is the question it made explicit: how should the criminal boundary be defined before a business decision is judged? That remains a serious issue to examine through the actual argument and its limits.