[3] With the development of the modern law, this crime has been discarded in many jurisdictions, and is generally only applied against persons placed in a special position of authority or responsibility.
For example, in England and Wales, the 1967 Act states that a person who has information which might lead to the prosecution of an arrestable offence—and who agrees to accept consideration in exchange for not disclosing it—is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment.
[6] Under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, it is illegal for anyone who is aware of being a target of a federal investigation to intentionally erase browser history on a computer.
Khairullozhan Matanov was prosecuted for erasing computer records about his friends, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev; he pleaded guilty to a lesser included offense in 2015.
[7][8] The federal misprision of felony statute is usually used only in prosecutions against defendants who have a special duty to report a crime, such as a government official.