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Reacting to Gladwell's Enron article
It's been a week now since Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article on the injustice of the case against Jeff Skilling. One of the more revealing reactions to the article resulted from a question that Gladwell posed in this blog post...
Lay-Skilling, Week Fifteen
Week 15 of the corporate criminal case of the decade (previous weeks summary posts here) was the relative calm before the final battle of closing arguments next week. Although there was a skirmish over the Ostrich jury instruction, the lull...
Lay-Skilling, Week Fourteen
Week 14 (previous week summaries here) of the corporate criminal case of the decade is in the books and the biggest news is that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has issued an edict that he does not want the case...
Lay-Skilling, Week Twelve
The Jeff Skilling segment of the corporate criminal trial of the decade concluded during Week Twelve (prior week summaries are here) as the former Enron CEO testified for a bit over three days on cross-examination from Enron Task Force director...
Lay-Skilling, Week Seven
As the seventh week (earlier week summaries here) of the epic corporate criminal trial of former key Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling drew to a close, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake gave the lawyers and the jurors an...
Oral argument today in the Nigerian Barge appeal
Oral argument takes place today at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in the appeals of Dan Bayly, Robert Furst, James Brown and William Fuhs, the former Merrill Lynch executives who were convicted of wire fraud and...
While the price of asserting innocence is high, pleading guilty is lucrative
Alexei Barrionuevo, who has been doing a fine job covering the day-to-day developments in the Lay-Skilling trial for the New York Times, and his Times colleague Kurt Eichenwald -- who has written the best overall book on the Enron scandal,...
Causey plea deal expected today
The Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal ($), the NY Times and the Washington Post began reporting last night that former Enron chief accountant Richard Causey will enter into a plea bargain with the Enron Task Force this afternoon in Houston...
How does the Enron Task Force really feel about Arthur Andersen?
This earlier post noted the 180 that the Enron Task Force has recently taken in regard to defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen. After demonizing the firm, gutting it with a misguided prosecution, and alleging that a number of the firm's...
Where it first does not succeed, the Enron Task Force tries, tries again
The Chronicle's Mary Flood reports in this article that the Enron Task Force has obtained three "streamlined" indictments against the five former Enron Broadband executives who were the subject of the previous failed Task Force prosecution over the same subject...
Signs of desperation at the Enron Task Force?
Already having engaged in intimidation of witnesses and dubious plea-bargaining tactics, the Enron Task Force is showing signs of becoming desperate regarding its legacy case. As noted in this post from earlier in the week, the Enron Task Force has...
Thinking about the Enron legacy case
It is currently the calm before the storm that will be the trial of the legacy case of the Enron Task Force -- that is, the criminal trial of former Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Richard Causey that...
2006 -- The Enron Trial Year
Over four years after Enron's descent into bankruptcy, 2006 is shaping up as the year of the Enron criminal trials. First, in mid-January, the trial of the Enron Task Force's legacy Enron case -- i.e., the trial that everyone will...
Judge Lake's letter-writing campaign
In a hearing yesterday afternoon in Houston federal court, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake continued to grapple with strong evidence that the Enron Task Force has engaged in a systematic campaign of intimidating witnesses in the upcoming trial of former...
The Chron interviews outgoing Enron Task Force Director
The Chronicle's Mary Flood, who has done a fine job of covering the Enron case for the local newspaper, interviews Andrew Weissmann, the former Enron Task Force director who resigned as director of the Task Force this past week amidst...
Another Enron plea bargain
On the day that the jury in the Enron Broadband trial began deliberations, the Enron Task Force announced that Christopher Calger, a former executive with Enron North America, had pleaded guilty to a criminal conspiracy count and agreed to cooperate...
When "Justice" destroys good reputations
The Sihpol acquittal yesterday focuses attention on an important aspect of the current wave of criminalizing merely questionable business transactions -- that is, the government's destruction of good reputations in its quest to obtain convictions and prevent juries from hearing...
Lay's team heaves a sigh of relief
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake ruled Thursday afternoon that bank-fraud charges against Enron former chairman and CEO Ken Lay would be tried to him without a jury early next year immediately following the multi-defendant conspiracy jury trial against Mr. Lay,...
The Enron law of unintended consequences
Remember that motion that former Enron chairman and CEO Ken Lay filed last fall in which he requested a separate trial from his Enron co-defendants Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey? You know, the one in which U.S. District Judge Sim...
Ken Lay presses for a speedy trial
In an astounding move in a case of nearly unprecedented negative publicity, Ex-Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay requested U.S. District Judge Sim Lake today to grant a speedy trial -- even possibly waving a jury trial to get it...
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