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.
(see U.S. DOJ list)
In order of appearance:
Defense
| Prosecution
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The jury rendered its verdict on May 25, 2006. Sentencing took place on October 23, 2006.
In a separate bench trial, Judge Sim Lake ruled that Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and false statements. These counts were also vacated because of Lay's death. [1]
Andrew Stuart "Andy" Fastow is a convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his and the company's conduct in 2001. Fastow was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence and ultimately served five years for convictions related to these acts. His wife, Lea Weingarten, also worked at Enron, where she was an assistant treasurer; she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and filing fraudulent income tax returns, and served jail time before early release to a halfway house.
A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court, which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court. An appellate court may also vacate its own decisions.
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.
Richard Marin Scrushy is an American businessman and convicted felon. He is the founder of HealthSouth Corporation, a global healthcare company based in Birmingham, Alabama. In 2004, following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Scrushy was criminally charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Scrushy was charged with 36 of the original 85 counts but was acquitted of all charges on June 28, 2005, after a jury trial in Birmingham.
The idiot defense is a satirical term for a legal strategy where a defendant claims innocence by virtue of having been ignorant of facts of which the defendant would normally be expected to be aware. Other terms used for this tactic include "dumb CEO defense", "dummy defense", "ostrich defense", "Ken Lay defense", and "Sergeant Schultz defense". The first known instance of the idiot defense was by John Henry Stafford, a lawyer in Jackson, Tennessee who was also known as Yankee John. He used it in the defense of Marlin Heady, a moonshiner. The charges were all, allegedly, dropped.
David Wittig is the former chief executive officer of Topeka, Kansas-based Westar Energy, a utility company.
Joseph P. Nacchio is an American executive who was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International from 1997 to 2002. Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest. He claimed in court, with documentation, that his was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.
CUC (Comp-U-Card) International Inc. was a membership-based consumer services conglomerate with travel, shopping, auto, dining, home improvement and financial services offered to more than 60 million customers worldwide based in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and founded in 1973 by Kirk Shelton and Walter Forbes. In 1998, it became involved in a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into what, at the time, was the biggest accounting scandal in corporate history.
Simeon Timothy Lake III is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. His notable trials include the trial of Enron Chairman Ken Lay and former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling.
Kenneth Lee Lay was the founder, CEO and chairman of Enron who was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the largest bankruptcy ever to that date. Lay was indicted by a grand jury and was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud at trial. Lay died in July 2006 while vacationing in his house near Aspen, Colorado, three months before his scheduled sentencing. A preliminary autopsy reported Lay died of a myocardial infarction caused by coronary artery disease; his death resulted in a vacated judgment.
The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.
Gregory Reyes is an American businessman who most recently served as the chief executive officer (CEO) for Brocade Communications. He is the first person to have been convicted for fraudulent backdating of corporate stock options.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
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."
Daniel M. Petrocelli is a partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and the Chair of the firm’s Trial Practice Committee. Petrocelli is known in part for his work in a 1997 wrongful death civil suit against O. J. Simpson, for representing Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, and for his leading role in defeating the US Department of Justice’s attempt to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner.
Ewing Werlein Jr. is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.