Enron slimebucket Skilling seeks to reverse verdict

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



Jailed boss seeks to reverse Enron verdict
·Skilling argues original jury selection was flawed
· Ruling may affect others linked to firm's demise

Andrew Clark in New York
The Guardian, Thursday April 3 2008


The jailed Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling yesterday embarked on an appeal, claiming that his 24-year sentence for fraud and insider trading resulted from an unfair trial in a city alive with "venomous emotion" over the energy trading firm's collapse.

One of America's most notorious cases of corporate corruption sparked back to life at a packed courthouse in New Orleans as Skilling's lawyer, Dan Petrocelli, pleaded for an immediate release of his client, who has been in a Minnesota prison since December 2006.

Legal analysts say the appeal has a chance, albeit it a slim one, of persuading a panel of three judges that either a key prosecution theory was flawed or that his case ought to have been moved from Enron's home city of Houston.

Skilling, 54, has never swayed from his protestations of innocence - his appeal brief says he is in prison "not only for crimes that he did not commit, but for acts of business judgement that are not crimes at all".

The defence argues that the jury selection process in his original trial was inadequate to root out prejudiced panellists in Houston, which suffered thousands of job losses when Enron collapsed in 2001.

"Long before any trial was convened, newspapers around the country, politicians in Washington and an inflamed public were all demanding prison sentences for Enron's managers," says the appeal brief. "In Houston, such calls rung out daily with venomous emotion." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/03/enron.useconomy