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Matching entries from Houston's Clear Thinkers
John O'Quinn, R.I.P.
The Houston legal community remains in shock over the death yesterday in a car accident of famed trial lawyer, John O'Quinn. He was 68 years old at the time of his death. O'Quinn was a remarkably talented plaintiff's lawyer...
Ellen Podgor on the trial penalty
Stetson College of Law Professor Ellen S. Podgor, who authors the popular White Collar Crime Prof Blog, has written an important law review article on a key issue that is confronting defense attorneys and courts in this age of...
An Enron Task Force-induced nightmare ends
So, the Fifth Circuit followed the instructions of the U.S. Supreme Court and finally directed the U.S. District Court in Houston to dismiss all remaining charges against former Enron Broadband executive, Scott Yeager. The appellate court's order effectively ends...
Reflecting on astonishing abuses of power
As Congress contemplates an historic extension of governmental control in regard to health care finance, a couple of stories relating to the growth of unrestrained exercise of governmental power in another area grabbed my attention. First, former Dynegy executive...
The criminalization-of-business lottery
The owners of Long Term Capital Management may have been the earliest winners in the most recent era of what Larry Ribstein has coined the criminalization-of-business lottery. On the other hand, Jamie Olis may have been the earliest big...
But what about that case in which the threat worked?
This Wall Street Journal editorial from earlier in the week rightly notes that the "Department of Justice finally got something right" by electing not to appeal the Second Circuit's decision earlier this year upholding U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's dismissal...
Criminal justice?
The always-insightful Larry Ribstein points out that Jamie Olis would have been better off providing material support for Osama Bin Laden than working on the beneficial structured finance transaction that ultimately led to his criminal conviction. The sad case...
Thoughts for a Sunday
The NY Times' Adam Liptak has penned a couple of interesting articles recently (here and here) on a frequent topic of this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) -- the troubling incarceration rate...
Conrad Black faces the trial penalty
Former Hollinger International chairman and CEO Conrad Black (previous posts here) was sentenced on Monday to six and a half years in prison as a result of his conviction on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction...
Did the DOJ hide the ball in the Olis case?
This earlier post reported on how the full story about the Department of Justice's sordid prosecution of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis is finally starting to come out in connection with a civil trial earlier this year by Olis' former...
Hedging the trial penalty
Although some have questioned his business ethics, no one has ever questioned that legendary Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt is good at hedging risk. After Wyatt was sentenced yesterday to a year in prison as a result of his plea deal...
Jamie Olis seeks another chance
A little over a month after I started this blog back in early 2004, former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis was sentenced to over 24 years in prison for allegedly cooking Dynegy's books. That shocking sentence aroused my interest in the...
Judge Kaplan hammers the DOJ in the KPMG case
As widely anticipated, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed all charges today against 13 former KPMG partners in the KPMG tax shelter case because of the prosecution's interference with the defendants' Constitutional rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. A...
Threatening to go Arthur Andersen on KPMG
This earlier post noted how the shadow of the sad case of Jamie Olis continues to hang over the KPMG tax shelter case in New York, and this post explored how Olis' defense was financially undermined by the Justice Department's...
A risky strategy in the Black trial
Mark Steyn -- who has done a wonderful job blogging the Conrad Black trial -- reports that the case will go to the jury next week after the defense rested this week with Black electing not to testify. The Black's...
The Jamie Olis connection in the KPMG criminal case
Following up on this post from a couple of weeks ago, the WSJ's ($) Paul Davies and David Reilly report on how the shadow of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis is hovering over the pending criminal proceedings against 16 former...
Is Jamie Olis' freedom worth less than ours?
The title to this post poses an unsettling question on this day when we pay tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. But recent revelations from the trial of the civil case relating to the criminal trial...
The DOJ's threat to go "Arthur Andersen" on Dynegy
This post from last week reported on how a recent civil lawsuit against Dynegy, Inc. involved issues relating to the Justice Department's 2003 threat to indict the company that contributed dramatically to the barbaric prosecution and prison sentence of former...
An interesting consequence of
criminalizing the right to counsel
One of the most egregious aspects of the federal government's criminalization of business during the post-Enron era has been the prosecution tactic of threatening to go Arthur Andersen on companies if they fulfilled a corporate policy or obligation to pay...
Thinking about the criminalization of business
Given that the governmental onslaught against business interests over the past several years is still a relatively recent occurrence, my sense is that we're still too close to it to be able to place it in the proper perspective. However,...
Jamie Olis finally gets a ticket to Bastrop
Jamie Olis, the former Dynegy mid-level executive whose prosecution and sentencing represents one of the most brutal examples of the federal government's criminalization of business since the bursting of the stock market bubble earlier this decade, has finally received a...
Has the BOP forgotten about Jamie Olis?
Earlier this week, Michael Kopper, one of the few true crooks in the Enron affair, traipsed off to a federal prison in west Texas to begin serving the 37 month sentence that he received in return for his testimony that...
The ordeal of Jamie Olis continues
As noted earlier here, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling will report to a minimum-security prison in Waseca, Minnesota on Tuesday to begin serving the brutal 24 year sentence that he was assessed on October 23rd. On January 2, former Enron...
Liberty and Justice for all?
The chronically overcrowded and abysmal condition of the Harris County Jail has been a frequent topic on this blog (most recently here), so this Bill Murphy/Houston Chronicle article from over the weekend caught my eye because it concerned the changing...
Eliot Spitzer, the bully
Given this record of criminalizing business interests for political gain, it's not surprising that New York's next governor was stacking the deck to obtain convictions in a number of his prosecutions. This David Hechler/Law.com article reports the ugly news: Like...
Professor Podgor on the trial penalty
As noted in this prior post, one of the most perverse elements of the government's criminalization of business in the post-Enron era has been the trial penalty -- that is, the substantially longer prison sentences that executives face if they...
The trial penalty issue in the Skilling case
One of the many troubling aspects of the Enron Task Force's prosecution of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling is the "trial penalty" that Skilling faces in connection with his sentencing (which is next Monday, October 23rd) -- that is, the...
The surprising Fastow sentence
This Kristin Hays-Tom Fowler/Chronicle article picks up on an aspect of the six-year sentence assessed to former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow earlier this week that has largely been ignored in the media but noted earlier here -- the Enron Task...
Try to make sense of this
Let's see if I get this straight. On one hand, Andrew Fastow -- who served up his wife as a sacrifical lamb for his embezzlement of millions from Enron that triggered one of the largest bankruptcy cases in U.S. history,...
Jamie Olis resentenced to six years
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake resentenced Jamie Olis to six years in prison this afternoon (Olis has already served about 2.5 years in prison) in the latest chapter of the three year saga that has become arguably the starkest example...
The Fastow sentencing memorandum
As Jamie Olis awaits his resentencing for working on a transaction for which he did not profit, Andrew Fastow's lawyers (one of whom is Olis' attorney -- small world, isn't it?) filed a sentencing memorandum earlier this week that claims...
The resentencing of Jamie Olis
US District Judge Sim Lake announced yesterday that Jamie Olis will be resentenced on Friday at 2 p.m., almost a year after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Lake's previous 24+ year sentence. As we await another chapter...
Awaiting the Jamie Olis sentence
As we await U.S. District Judge Sim Lake's decision on the resentencing of Jamie Olis later this week, this Economist article does an excellent job of summarizing the issues that are at play in determining the all-important market loss issue...
Olis resentencing hearing concludes
After a hearing in state court yesterday concluded, I was able to attend the conclusion of the resentencing hearing for Jamie Olis in U.S. District Judge Sim Lake's court (Tom Fowler's Chronicle article on the hearing is here). My sense...
The Olis market loss hearing
The hearing phase of the re-sentencing of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis involving the key market loss issue is taking place yesterday and today before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, and the Chronicle's Tom Fowler files this report on yesterday's...
Prosecution continues bidding in the Olis sentencing case
Let's see here. First, the Justice Department misleads U.S. District Judge Sim Lake in regard to the true amount of the market loss resulting from the transaction that forms the basis of former mid-level executive Jamie Olis' conviction, which in...
An attempt to withdraw a guilty plea exposes a dirty secret of the Enron criminal cases
As noted in this previous post about the typical mainstream media view toward the Enron criminal prosecutions, most media accounts of the case have perpetuated the myth (see also here) that the Enron Task Force has done a good job...
Grundfest takes on the sad case of Jamie Olis
A heavyweight has entered the ring on behalf of Jamie Olis. The WSJ's Peter Lattman reports that Joseph A. Grundfest, W.A. Franke Professor of Law at Stanford University and one of the leading securities law experts in the US, is...
Key natural gas trader case goes to the jury
In a surprising development, the defense in the trial of former Dynegy trader Michelle Valencia and former El Paso trader Greg Singleton (previous posts here) on conspiracy and fraud charges relating to their submission of false gas trading data to...
Hope for sanity in sentencing of business executives?
Although just one case, at least one federal judge has concluded that the resentment and scapegoating that has driven the criminalization of business during the post-Enron era has gone too far. In this thoughtful sentencing memorandum relating to the conviction...
Ken Lay and the Enron Myth
Former Enron chairman and CEO Ken Lay died yesterday of a heart attack and, given the stress that Mr. Lay had endured over the past five years, such a fate is certainly not surprising. However, my sense is that the...
Olis resentencing hearing finally scheduled
Red Redding, Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption, commented that "prison time is slow time" and that "prison life consists of routine, and then more routine." Those observations are certainly true in regard to the resentencing of Jamie Olis....
Scheduling conference today in the sad case of Jamie Olis
On the heels of the Fifth Circuit ordering the release from prison yesterday of two other business executives who have been subjected to the Justice Department's demonization of business in the post-Enron era, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake will conduct...
Lay-Skilling, Week Seventeen
Remember that point made in the previous week summaries about the predisposition of the leaders on the jury determining the outcome of the trial of the corporate criminal case of the decade? Well, in a strong indication that this trial...
Jamie Olis' nightmare continues
The ever-alert Doug Berman notes that, in an expected decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied Jamie Olis' appeal of U.S. District Judge Sim Lake's denial of Olis' motion for release pending the Judge's re-sentencing of Olis after...
Will Jamie Olis be freed pending re-sentencing?
This Tom Fowler/Chronicle article reports on the oral argument yesterday at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis' appeal of U.S. District Judge Sim Lake's denial of Olis' motion to be released...
Comparing Martin Frankel and Jamie Olis
Outside the glare of the trial of the corporate criminal case of the decade, a true corporate crook -- financier Martin Frankel -- was re-sentenced yesterday in a post-Booker hearing to 17 years in prison for pulling off one of...
Department of Coercion
John Hasnas is a professor of ethics and law at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and is the author of the new book, Trapped: When Acting Ethically is Against the Law (Cato 2006), which is an adaptation of Hasnas'...
Guilty plea in another gas trader reporting case
Donald Burwell, a former El Paso Corp. energy trader, pled guilty under a cooperation agreement with the Justice Department to federal charges Tuesday that he falsely reported natural gas trading data to a natural gas industry publication. Burwell faces a...
Hope for Jamie Olis?
This previous post highlighted the egregiously disingenuous approach that the Justice Department has taken on the market loss issue in order to promote an absurdly long prison sentence for former mid-level Dynegy executive, Jamie Olis. Now, the Third Circuit in...
Short selling, Enron and Jamie Olis
Now that title got your attention, didn't it? ;^) Selling stocks short receives a bad rap generally because it generates profits from misfortune -- i.e., when the stock price goes down -- which is counter-intuitive to how most folks believe...
More prosecutorial misconduct in the sad case of Jamie Olis
One can only wonder when the mainstream media will pick up on the outrageous conduct of the Justice Department in the sad case of former mid-level Dynegy executive Jamie Olis? First, in a prosecution that probably should never have been...
The high price of asserting innocence
Last week, former Enron chief accountant Richard Causey pled guilty to a single count of securities fraud and agreed to a seven-year prison term after vigorously defending himself from multiple charges of business crimes for over two years. Had he...
Jamie Olis resentencing hearing postponed
The long-awaited resentencing hearing in the sad case of Jamie Olis that was scheduled to take place today has been postponed indefinitely to give U.S. District Judge Sim Lake time to review recently-filed materials in the case relating to the...
Your Justice Department at work
In what can only be described as an over-the-top and spiteful request, the prosecutors in the sad case of Jamie Olis requested yesterday that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake resentence Olis to a 15 year jail sentence that is exceeded...
What's the big deal with the Lord of Regulation?
Matthew T. Bodie is a Hofstra law professor who is guest blogging over at the Conglomerate blog and, in this post, wonders why fellow law professors such as Stephen Bainbridge and Larry Ribstein are critical of New York attorney general...
Hearing on Olis resentencing scheduled
This Chronicle article reports that the hearing on the re-sentencing of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis will take place on Thursday January 5, 2006 before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, with briefs due on the resentencing issues on December 20...
Lay-Skilling-Causey witness intimidation allegations scheduled for hearing
This Mary Flood/Chronicle article reports that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has scheduled a hearing in the Enron Task Force's legacy case against former key Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey over the defendants' allegations that the...
Steffy on the sad case of Jamie Olis
Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy -- who blogs over at Full Disclosure -- does not generally share my view that government has gone overboard in the post-Enron era of criminalizing merely questionable business transactions. However, when it comes to the...
Finally, some justice for Jamie Olis
The sad case of Jamie Olis has been a frequent topic on this blog as an egregious example of the injustice that has resulted from the government's increasing criminalization of business in American society. Last night, after many months of...
Help me understand this
Daniel L. Gordon, Merrill Lynch's former chief energy trader, was sentenced Friday to 3 1/2 years in prison after admitting that he had stolen $43 million from the brokerage firm. Although the prosecution was only requesting a couple of years...
More on criminalizing risk-taking
Robert Weisberg is Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University, where he teaches a course on white collar crime with David Mills, who is a senior lecturer there. In this...
WSJ editors do better, but where have they been?
After criticizing the Wall Street Journal yesterday for running a listless article about prosecutorial misconduct in the Enron-related criminal cases, it's only fair to note that the WSJ editors do much better today in this editorial ($) (see this related...
The hypocrisy of Republican outrage over the DeLay prosecution
In reading the various Republican statements (see here and here) alleging that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is engaging in an outlandish abuse of power in regard to his decision to indict House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a thought...
Kozlowski and Swartz sentenced
Former Tyco International executives L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz were led away from a New York City state courthouse in handcuffs today after New York state Justice Michael Obus sentenced them to serve 8 1/3 to 25 years in...
The myopia of the Times
It should be considered progress whenever the New York Times runs an article questioning the draconian prison sentences that are being handed down to business executives in connection with the government's criminalization of business during the post-Enron era. However, one...
Judge examining Lay-Skilling witness tampering charges
Following on this post from earlier this summer, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake gave his strongest indication to date that he is prepared to take action against the Enron Task Force's strategy to deny former Enron chairman Ken Lay, former...
Prosecution increases the stakes in another trader case
The Justice Department announced Thursday that it has filed a superseding indictment alleging additional counts of wire fraud and reporting fake trades against former El Paso Corp. trader Donald Burwell. The superseding indictment is the latest development in a series...
But what about Jamie Olis?
Doug Berman points out that Thursday was a busy day in New Orleans as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued over 160 published and unpublished decisions that appear mostly to involve rejection of various Booker sentencing claims. It's safe...
More thoughts on the Merrill Lynch defendants' Nigerian Barge appeal
Having tended to my "day" job at the end of last week, I wanted to pass along some further thoughts on the lively discussion that erupted between Vic Fleischer, Larry Ribstein, other commentators, and me last week in regard to...
The Merrill Lynch defendants appeal in the Nigerian Barge case - criminalization of business run amok
The Enron-related Nigerian Barge case has been a frequent topic on this blog as a prime example of the Justice Department's dubious criminalization of common business practices in the post-Enron era. As a result of that questionable policy, four former...
The sad case of Daniel Bayly
Daniel Bayly has had an impeccable professional career. A 30 year veteran of the executive ranks of Merrill Lynch, Mr. Bayly joined Merrill in 1972 as an associate in New York and rose through the ranks to become a managing...
A crushing defeat for the Enron Task Force
In yet another stunning blow in a series of setbacks to the Enron Task Force, the jury in the Enron Broadband trial returned late this afternoon and advised U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore that they had acquitted three of the...
The illusory attorney-client privilege
In this timely post, White Collar Crime Prof Peter Henning notes a recent Fourth Circuit decision that bears on an increasingly knotty issue in this post-Enron era of criminalizing business -- that is, an employee's waiver of the attorney-client privilege...
Ebbers receives an effective life sentence
Former WorldCom CEO 63 year old Bernard J. Ebbers received a 25 year sentence for his conviction on charges of securities fraud, conspiracy and seven counts of filing false reports with regulators relating to an a multi-billion accounting fraud...
Scrushy is acquitted
Former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard M. Scrushy was found not guilty today by the jury in the trial over over his alleged participation in a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at the huge health services company. Along with the sentencings in...
While Theodore Sihpol goes home, William Fuhs goes to jail
Continuing relentlessly to avoid addressing the real issue, this NY Times article speculates that the problem with Eliot Spitzer's recent unsuccessful prosecution of Theodore C. Sihpol, III was not that he charged Mr. Sihpol in the first place, but that...
George Melloan on the Andersen decision
George Melloan is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he is responsible for the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Asian Wall Street Journal and writing a weekly column called Global View. Mr. Melloan...
The similarity of Russian and U.S. prosecutions of business figures
Former billionaire Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison yesterday by a Russian court in a case that businesspersons from around the world have followed carefully as a sign of the Russian government's willingness to...
Sentencing run amok
The Chronicle's Mary Flood reports today on recent developments in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case, in which four former Merrill Lynch executives and one former Enron executive are awaiting sentencing after being convicted last year of wire fraud and conspiracy...
Dynegy settles class action claims
Former Enron suitor Dynegy Inc. has agreed to pay $468 million to settle a class action suit that accused the Houston-based company and several of its former officers and directors of conspiring to cook the company's books to mislead investors....
Fifth Circuit issues its first post-Booker decision
In its first decision since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Booker that overruled the mandatory nature of the federal sentencing guidelines, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on this past Friday explained how Booker issues are to...
Enron saga turns Grisham
This Weekend Advisor column in the Wall Street Journal ($) advises us that the market for books on the Enron scandal has not been all that great. The best book on the subject to date -- Bethany McLean and Peter...
Lea Fastow's motion to reduce sentence is denied
The Chronicle's Mary Flood, who continues to do a fine job of covering the Enron scandal, posted this article today regarding U.S. District Judge David Hittner's denial of Lea Fastow's motion to reduce her one year sentence for misdemeanor tax...
Report on the 5th Circuit argument in the sad case of Jamie Olis
Ann Woolner of Bloomberg.com attended the Fifth Circuit oral argument on the appeal of Jamie Olis' sentence and files this report. She is optimistic, as I am, that the Fifth Circuit will reverse Olis' 24 year sentence and remand his...
The same old Enron story
Following on this earlier post regarding the new Enron documentary Smartest Guys in the Room, the Houston Press' Joe Leydon is breathless in praising the documentary: Please don't misunderstand: Alex Gibney has no great beef with capitalism. Indeed, many of...
The sad case of Jamie Olis gets even sadder
This Dallas Morning News article reports that the sad case of Jamie Olis, the mid-level Dynegy executive who was sentenced to a 24 year prison sentence last year for attempting to prove his innocence on accounting fraud charges, has taken...
More on the SCOTUS sentencing guidelines decision
The dust is settling on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision yesterday in United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan that the federal sentencing guidelines are unconstitutional because they violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be tried by...
The WSJ on the case against Ken Lay
This John R. Emshwiller and Rebecca Smith Wall Street Journal ($) article provides an overview of the Justice Department's criminal case against former Enron chairman and CEO, Ken Lay. Mr. Emshwiller and Ms. Smith have been covering the Enron scandal...
Fifth Circuit upholds vague Commodity Exchange Act reporting law
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans issued this decision on Friday in the case of former Dynegy trader Michelle Valencia that upholds a controversial law that the Justice Department has used to charge a group of Houston...
Remember Martin Frankel?
Given the federal government's increasing propensity to regulate business through criminalizing questionable business transactions, it's easy to overlook the instances where the criminal justice system actually punishes a real bonafide business crook. Martin Frankel was a small-time New York money...
Checking in again on the Nigerian Barge trial
The defendants began putting on their cases this week in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge trial in Houston federal court, and already there have been some significant developments. Attorneys for defendants and former Merrill Lynch executives James Brown and Daniel Bayly...
Update on the sad case of Jamie Olis
David Gerger, appellate counsel for former Dynegy finance employee Jamie Olis filed Mr. Olis' appellant's brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this week in which Mr. Gerger contends that Mr. Olis' conviction and 24-year prison sentence should be...
Nigerian Barge case postponed again
The Enron Task Force's recent decision to re-indict the defendants in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case has caused another postponement of the trial in that case. The trial, which was scheduled to begin on either August 16 or 17th, has...
Chuck Watson settles with Dynegy
Dynegy founder and former chief executive officer Chuck Watson and his chief operating officer -- Steve Bergstrom -- will receive a combined $32 million in severance payments under a settlement of their severance claims with the company. Mr. Watson will...
Criminalizing business
Gil Weinrich has a piece at TCS Central that proposes a different approach to punishment of corporate wrongdoers: Our society does a poor job of penalizing [corporate] crime. . . In the white-collar arena, the unrequited losses endured by victims...
Blakely Redux
With strong prompting from the Justice Department, the issues regarding the validity of federal and state sentencing guidelines generated by the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Blakely v. Washington decision are going to be teed up again soon in the Supreme...
The Chesnoffs are everywhere
On the heels of my earlier post today on Richard Chesnoff's NY Daily News op-ed, I clicked on the television to watch Martha Stewart's statement after her sentencing. Much to my surprise, my old friend David Chesnoff -- one of...
Tyco's general counsel acquitted
Mark Belnick, the former Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner who was Tyco's general counsel during the Dennis Kozlowski scandals, was acquitted yesterday of corporate fraud charges that involved an allegedly unapproved $15 million bonus and $14 million in...
More decisions on Blakely
The decisions are coming down fast and furious from the various Circuits Courts of Appeal in regard to the recent Supreme Court Blakely decision, which was noted in these earlier posts. Professor Berman over at Sentencing Law and Policy is...
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This LA Times article is the best analysis that I have seen to date regarding what occurred in the sad case of former mid-level Dynegy accountant Jamie Olis that resulted in the absurd 24 year sentence for Mr. Olis. In...
Seventh Circuit decision on Blakely
Highly-regarded Circuit Judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote the majority and dissenting opinions in this recent decision (U.S. v. Booker) interpreting the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. v. Blakely. In...
Update on Lay indictment
It looked like a video campsite outside the Federal Courthouse in Houston on Thursday as the media gathered to observe the spectacle of former Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay being led into the courthouse in handcuffs. Mr. Lay pled...
SCOTUS sentencing decision reviewed
In this article, the Wall Street Journal ($) does a good job of summarizing the initial reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week in Blakely v. Washington, a decision that could have major implications for the federal sentencing...
Thoughtful piece on criminalization of business
Professor Ribstein -- who is the blogosphere's foremost commentator on the troubling trend in the government's criminalization of business -- points us to this interesting this New York Times Magazine article in which novelist Mark Costello (most recently ''Big If'')...
The new definition of "cooperation"
This timely Wall Street Journal ($) article reports on the government's new pressure tactic in investigating and prosecuting business crimes -- pressuring businesses to condition the business' support of its employees who are under investigation on the employee's cooperation with...
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This Wall Street Journal ($) article is the most thorough report yet on the sad case of Jamie Olis, the 38 year old former Dynegy mid-level tax manager who was convicted and recently sentenced to over 24 years in federal...
Update on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This Chronicle story reports that former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis has been ordered to begin serving his 24-year prison sentence on May 20th for participating in an accounting scheme to disguise a $300 million loan as cash flow for Dynegy....
Proving mens rea in corporate criminal cases
This Wall Street Journal ($) article addresses the knotty problem of proving mens rea (i.e., intent) in corporate criminal cases. As the Journal article notes, the problem, in short, is this: It may be obvious that an executive did something...
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
Larry E. Ribstein is the Richard & Marie Corman Professor of Law University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. Professor Ribstein runs an interesting business law blog called Ideoblog, and yesterday he posted this timely item about a CLE...
Holman Jenkins on the sad case of Jamie Olis
As noted on this blog before, Holman Jenkins is one of America's most insightful commentators on business issues. In his Wall Street Journal ($) column today, Mr. Jenkins addresses the injustice that occurred recently in the 24 year sentence given...
Update on the Jamie Olis sentencing
Following up on this earlier post on the sad case of Jamie Olis, the sentence is in -- 24 years. Here is the NY Times article on the sentencing....
The sad case of Jamie Olis
This NY Times article reports on the sad case of a former midlevel executive of Houston-based Dynegy, the energy company that attempted to merge with Enron and then called off the deal shortly before Enron filed bankruptcy in December, 2001....
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