Saturday, March 15, 2008
The cloud over the Enron prosecution
I noted a couple of days ago that there was a big problem brewing in the Enron trial, with the specter of possible prosecutorial misconduct regarding the prosecution's destruction of exculpatory evidence in Andy Fastow's government interviews. Today, Tom Kirkendall drops the other shoe, discussing the now unsealed defense supplemental brief: As Tom says:
The brief reveals suppression of exculpatory evidence by the Enron Task Force of a massive scale. The entire brief is devastating to the Task Force's prosecution of Skilling and the late Enron chairman, Ken Lay. * * *
The implications of this brief reach far beyond the Skilling appeal. For example, the already-reeling prosecution of the four Merrill Lynch bankers in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case would appear to be over -- the prosecution in that case not only withheld exculpatory evidence, but put on incriminating testimony from former Enron treasurer Ben Glisan that directly contradicted the exculpatory evidence that Fastow provided to Task Force prosecutors during his interviews. Other Enron-related criminal cases -- as well as plea bargains -- could well be affected....