I am delighted with the NYT article about Jeff Skilling’s sentence. It does not go to the final logical conclusion that the Skilling case was a witch hunt, but it certainly moves in that direction.
Let me point out a few quotes from that article (things, I modestly point out, that I have harped on for years in this blog):
The case against Mr. Skilling was so amorphous that prosecutors found it difficult at first to weave the various threads into a cogent narrative.
You think! Prosecutor John Hueston wrote about the Skilling/Lay case (as prosecutor John Kroger wrote about the EBS case) that there was no compelling evidence of a crime and that the Feds had to “weave” a tale to have anything to present to a jury. Is it just me or does it also strike you that this is a sorry (and frightening) basis for bringing an indictment against a person?!
… that attempt does not appear to have been a calculated scheme …
This is a big deal in most of the Enron cases. As the Feds charged the Skilling (and EBS) case, without a “scheme”, there was no intent, and without intent, there was no crime.
Mr. Skilling is clearly being penalized for not cooperating with prosecutors.
Sound like Roger Clemens to anyone?! All the Enron defendants who had the audacity to actually defend themselves at trial were hounded by the Feds. Defending yourself against an accuser is a constitutionally protected right in the USA — it is simply wrong for the Feds to punish people who exercise it.
There are other interesting tidbits in the article. Hopefully, this will spur some of the mindless Enron bashers to finally question the false Enron Fairy Tale they have been accepting for so many years!
