Frank Hughes Murkowski is an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. He was a United States Senator from Alaska from 1981 until 2002 and the eighth governor of Alaska from 2002 until 2006. In his 2006 re-election bid, he finished in third place in the Republican primary behind Sarah Palin and John Binkley. Murkowski is notable for having appointed his daughter, Lisa Murkowski, to replace him in the U.S. Senate after he resigned his Senate seat to become governor of Alaska.
Jeffrey Keith Skilling is a convicted felon best known as the CEO of Enron Corporation during the Enron scandal. In 2006, he was convicted of federal felony charges relating to Enron's collapse and eventually sentenced to 24 years in prison. The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in the appeal of the case March 1, 2010. On June 24, 2010, the Supreme Court vacated part of Skilling's conviction and transferred the case back to the lower court for resentencing.
Mail fraud and wire fraud are federal crimes in the United States that involve mailing or electronically transmitting something associated with fraud. Jurisdiction is claimed by the federal government if the illegal activity crosses interstate or international borders.
A restraint on alienation, in the law of real property, is a clause used in the conveyance of real property that seeks to prohibit the recipient from selling or otherwise transferring his interest in the property. Under the common law such restraints are void as against the public policy of allowing landowners to freely dispose of their property. Perhaps the ultimate restraint on alienation was the fee tail, a form of ownership which required that property be passed down in the same family from generation to generation, which has also been widely abolished.
In American constitutional law, a statute is void for vagueness and unenforceable if it is too vague for the average citizen to understand, and a constitutionally-protected interest cannot tolerate permissible activity to be chilled within the range of the vagueness. There are several reasons a statute may be considered vague; in general, a statute might be void for vagueness when an average citizen cannot generally determine what persons are regulated, what conduct is prohibited, or what punishment may be imposed. For example, criminal laws which do not state explicitly and definitely what conduct is punishable are void for vagueness. A statute is also void for vagueness if a legislature's delegation of authority to judges and/or administrators is so extensive that it would lead to arbitrary prosecutions. Related to the "void for vagueness" concept is the "unconstitutional vagueness" concept. A law can be "void for vagueness" if it imposes on First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, or religion.
The trial of Kenneth Lay, former chairman and CEO of Enron, and Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO and COO, was presided over by federal district court Judge Sim Lake in 2006 in response to the Enron scandal.
Kevin A. Ring is a former American attorney and congressional staffer; he served Republicans in both the House and the Senate, including U.S. Representative John T. Doolittle (R-CA). He also served as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights Subcommittee.
Perez v. Sharp, also known as Perez v. Lippold or Perez v. Moroney, is a 1948 case decided by the Supreme Court of California in which the court held by a 4–3 majority that the state's ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Making false statements is the common name for the United States federal process crime laid out in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which generally prohibits knowingly and willfully making false or fraudulent statements, or concealing information, in "any matter within the jurisdiction" of the federal government of the United States, even by merely denying guilt when asked by a federal agent. A number of notable people have been convicted under the section, including Martha Stewart, Rod Blagojevich, Michael T. Flynn, Rick Gates, Scooter Libby, Bernard Madoff, and Jeffrey Skilling.
The Alaska political corruption probe refers to a 2003 to 2010 widespread investigation by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service into political corruption of nine then-current or former Alaskan state lawmakers, as well as Republican US Representative Don Young and then-US Senator, Republican Ted Stevens. Sometimes referred to as "The Corrupt Bastard's Club" or the "Operation Polar Pen", the investigation focused on the oil industry, fisheries and for-profit prison industries.
Jim Clark served as Chief of Staff to the Governor of Alaska during the administration of former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski.
Bruce Weyhrauch is an attorney in Juneau, Alaska, United States. He is also a former representative in the Alaska State House representing Juneau's District 4. Weyhrauch has practiced at his own law office in Juneau for nearly three decades. His regulatory and government affairs-focused practice handles a wide variety of matters, including labor relations and natural resources.
Black v. United States, 561 U.S. 465 (2010), is a white-collar criminal law case decided by the United States Supreme Court dealing with businessman Conrad Black's fraud trial. Along with two companion cases—Skilling v. United States and Weyhrauch v. United States—it dealt with the honest services provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1346.
Honest services fraud is a crime defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1346, added by the United States Congress in 1988, which states "For the purposes of this chapter, the term scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."
McNally v. United States, 483 U.S. 350 (1987), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that the federal statute criminalizing mail fraud applied only to the schemes and artifices defrauding victims of money or property, as opposed to those defrauding citizens of their rights to good government. The case was superseded one year later when the United States Congress amended the law to specifically include honest services fraud in the mail and wire fraud statutes.
Padmanabhan Srikanth "Sri" Srinivasan is an Indian-born American jurist and attorney serving as the Chief United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The United States Senate confirmed Srinivasan by a vote of 97–0 on May 23, 2013. Before his confirmation, Srinivasan served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States and argued 25 cases before the United States Supreme Court. He has also lectured at Harvard Law School.
Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 561 U.S. 247 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extraterritorial effect of U.S. securities legislation. Morrison extinguished two species of securities class-action claims that had proliferated in preceding years: "foreign-cubed" claims, in which foreign plaintiffs sued foreign issuers for losses on transactions on foreign exchanges, and "foreign-squared" claims, brought by domestic plaintiffs against foreign issuers for losses on transactions on foreign exchanges.
Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case that concerned the definition of "property" under the federal mail fraud statute. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that "property" for the purposes of federal law did not include state video poker licences because such transactions were not a vested right or expectation.
Several statutes, mostly codified in Title 18 of the United States Code, provide for federal prosecution of public corruption in the United States. Federal prosecutions of public corruption under the Hobbs Act, the mail and wire fraud statutes, including the honest services fraud provision, the Travel Act, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) began in the 1970s. "Although none of these statutes was enacted in order to prosecute official corruption, each has been interpreted to provide a means to do so." The federal official bribery and gratuity statute, 18 U.S.C. § 201, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) 15 U.S.C. § 78dd, and the federal program bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666 directly address public corruption.
Robin L. Williams is an American businessman and former member of the Georgia House of Representatives.
