Rex Shelby has depleted his available life savings in defending himself for more than eight years so he now does not have enough money for another trial. Therefore, he has accepted a plea deal in which the government is likely taking from him the remaining savings that they froze when they indicted him. That’s a big advantage that the government has over any defendant — they can freeze most of a defendant’s money and then pursue him until he exhausts his remaining funds. A defendant uses his own money, but the government uses taxpayer money.
I hate that the American legal system is so geared to plea deals and that the government holds most of the cards in those deals. While everyone will probably think this is a great deal for Rex Shelby (and it is), I suspect that Rex himself is miserable. He wanted that trial passionately.
The details of the wording of this deal are telling. In essence, the government wants us to believe that Rex Shelby is responsible for leaving the analysts who attended the January 2000 Enron Analyst Conference with the “impression” that the Enron Broadband technology was entirely “complete” when it wasn’t all finished.
Hmm, let me analyze that idea. First, software technology is never “complete” in the way the government is implying. Have the prosecutors never heard of releases, like version 1.0, 2.0, etc.? Technology is always being upgraded. By the government’s standards, all the people in all the technology companies in the world should be indicted because they have the audacity to continue working on their technology to make it better. And let us recall Rex’s comment on the stand in Trial One that “software is not complete until it is obsolete.”
I have watched the video of that conference and read the transcript many times. Rex Shelby only shows up on a pre-recorded two-minute video — that’s it for him at the entire conference! There is not a single point during that conference where Rex Shelby, or anyone else, said that the Enron Broadband technology was already completely done. In fact, Jeff Skilling said just the opposite during a Q/A session at the end of the conference.
So, in other words, an analyst at that conference would need to be a total moron to have the impression that the technology was entirely “complete”. And Rex Shelby is certainly not responsible for any stupid “impression” that a moron gets that is contrary to what was actually presented at the conference. And, oh by the way, I have never read a report from an analyst who said he thought the technology was completely done, and the government never provided an analyst’s testimony to that effect.
Well said. It is a shame and points out the flaw that called the plea bargain system. A very innocent person like Rex Shelby cannot withstand the endless pressure of the Government with tax paid resources that are unlimited.