Search this site
Matching entries from Houston's Clear Thinkers
But what about that case in which the threat worked?
This Wall Street Journal editorial from earlier in the week rightly notes that the "Department of Justice finally got something right" by electing not to appeal the Second Circuit's decision earlier this year upholding U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's dismissal...
Criminal justice?
The always-insightful Larry Ribstein points out that Jamie Olis would have been better off providing material support for Osama Bin Laden than working on the beneficial structured finance transaction that ultimately led to his criminal conviction. The sad case...
Threatening to go Arthur Andersen on KPMG
This earlier post noted how the shadow of the sad case of Jamie Olis continues to hang over the KPMG tax shelter case in New York, and this post explored how Olis' defense was financially undermined by the Justice Department's...
The DOJ's threat to go "Arthur Andersen" on Dynegy
This post from last week reported on how a recent civil lawsuit against Dynegy, Inc. involved issues relating to the Justice Department's 2003 threat to indict the company that contributed dramatically to the barbaric prosecution and prison sentence of former...
An interesting consequence of
criminalizing the right to counsel
One of the most egregious aspects of the federal government's criminalization of business during the post-Enron era has been the prosecution tactic of threatening to go Arthur Andersen on companies if they fulfilled a corporate policy or obligation to pay...
Eliot Spitzer, the bully
Given this record of criminalizing business interests for political gain, it's not surprising that New York's next governor was stacking the deck to obtain convictions in a number of his prosecutions. This David Hechler/Law.com article reports the ugly news: Like...
Professor Podgor on the trial penalty
As noted in this prior post, one of the most perverse elements of the government's criminalization of business in the post-Enron era has been the trial penalty -- that is, the substantially longer prison sentences that executives face if they...
The trial penalty issue in the Skilling case
One of the many troubling aspects of the Enron Task Force's prosecution of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling is the "trial penalty" that Skilling faces in connection with his sentencing (which is next Monday, October 23rd) -- that is, the...
The resentencing of Jamie Olis
US District Judge Sim Lake announced yesterday that Jamie Olis will be resentenced on Friday at 2 p.m., almost a year after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Lake's previous 24+ year sentence. As we await another chapter...
Grundfest takes on the sad case of Jamie Olis
A heavyweight has entered the ring on behalf of Jamie Olis. The WSJ's Peter Lattman reports that Joseph A. Grundfest, W.A. Franke Professor of Law at Stanford University and one of the leading securities law experts in the US, is...
Olis resentencing hearing finally scheduled
Red Redding, Morgan Freeman's character in The Shawshank Redemption, commented that "prison time is slow time" and that "prison life consists of routine, and then more routine." Those observations are certainly true in regard to the resentencing of Jamie Olis....
Scheduling conference today in the sad case of Jamie Olis
On the heels of the Fifth Circuit ordering the release from prison yesterday of two other business executives who have been subjected to the Justice Department's demonization of business in the post-Enron era, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake will conduct...
Department of Coercion
John Hasnas is a professor of ethics and law at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and is the author of the new book, Trapped: When Acting Ethically is Against the Law (Cato 2006), which is an adaptation of Hasnas'...
Guilty plea in another gas trader reporting case
Donald Burwell, a former El Paso Corp. energy trader, pled guilty under a cooperation agreement with the Justice Department to federal charges Tuesday that he falsely reported natural gas trading data to a natural gas industry publication. Burwell faces a...
Short selling, Enron and Jamie Olis
Now that title got your attention, didn't it? ;^) Selling stocks short receives a bad rap generally because it generates profits from misfortune -- i.e., when the stock price goes down -- which is counter-intuitive to how most folks believe...
More prosecutorial misconduct in the sad case of Jamie Olis
One can only wonder when the mainstream media will pick up on the outrageous conduct of the Justice Department in the sad case of former mid-level Dynegy executive Jamie Olis? First, in a prosecution that probably should never have been...
The high price of asserting innocence
Last week, former Enron chief accountant Richard Causey pled guilty to a single count of securities fraud and agreed to a seven-year prison term after vigorously defending himself from multiple charges of business crimes for over two years. Had he...
Jamie Olis resentencing hearing postponed
The long-awaited resentencing hearing in the sad case of Jamie Olis that was scheduled to take place today has been postponed indefinitely to give U.S. District Judge Sim Lake time to review recently-filed materials in the case relating to the...
Your Justice Department at work
In what can only be described as an over-the-top and spiteful request, the prosecutors in the sad case of Jamie Olis requested yesterday that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake resentence Olis to a 15 year jail sentence that is exceeded...
Hearing on Olis resentencing scheduled
This Chronicle article reports that the hearing on the re-sentencing of former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis will take place on Thursday January 5, 2006 before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, with briefs due on the resentencing issues on December 20...
Lay-Skilling-Causey witness intimidation allegations scheduled for hearing
This Mary Flood/Chronicle article reports that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake has scheduled a hearing in the Enron Task Force's legacy case against former key Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey over the defendants' allegations that the...
Steffy on the sad case of Jamie Olis
Chronicle business columnist Loren Steffy -- who blogs over at Full Disclosure -- does not generally share my view that government has gone overboard in the post-Enron era of criminalizing merely questionable business transactions. However, when it comes to the...
Finally, some justice for Jamie Olis
The sad case of Jamie Olis has been a frequent topic on this blog as an egregious example of the injustice that has resulted from the government's increasing criminalization of business in American society. Last night, after many months of...
More on criminalizing risk-taking
Robert Weisberg is Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University, where he teaches a course on white collar crime with David Mills, who is a senior lecturer there. In this...
WSJ editors do better, but where have they been?
After criticizing the Wall Street Journal yesterday for running a listless article about prosecutorial misconduct in the Enron-related criminal cases, it's only fair to note that the WSJ editors do much better today in this editorial ($) (see this related...
The hypocrisy of Republican outrage over the DeLay prosecution
In reading the various Republican statements (see here and here) alleging that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle is engaging in an outlandish abuse of power in regard to his decision to indict House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a thought...
The myopia of the Times
It should be considered progress whenever the New York Times runs an article questioning the draconian prison sentences that are being handed down to business executives in connection with the government's criminalization of business during the post-Enron era. However, one...
Judge examining Lay-Skilling witness tampering charges
Following on this post from earlier this summer, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake gave his strongest indication to date that he is prepared to take action against the Enron Task Force's strategy to deny former Enron chairman Ken Lay, former...
But what about Jamie Olis?
Doug Berman points out that Thursday was a busy day in New Orleans as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued over 160 published and unpublished decisions that appear mostly to involve rejection of various Booker sentencing claims. It's safe...
More thoughts on the Merrill Lynch defendants' Nigerian Barge appeal
Having tended to my "day" job at the end of last week, I wanted to pass along some further thoughts on the lively discussion that erupted between Vic Fleischer, Larry Ribstein, other commentators, and me last week in regard to...
The sad case of Daniel Bayly
Daniel Bayly has had an impeccable professional career. A 30 year veteran of the executive ranks of Merrill Lynch, Mr. Bayly joined Merrill in 1972 as an associate in New York and rose through the ranks to become a managing...
A crushing defeat for the Enron Task Force
In yet another stunning blow in a series of setbacks to the Enron Task Force, the jury in the Enron Broadband trial returned late this afternoon and advised U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore that they had acquitted three of the...
The illusory attorney-client privilege
In this timely post, White Collar Crime Prof Peter Henning notes a recent Fourth Circuit decision that bears on an increasingly knotty issue in this post-Enron era of criminalizing business -- that is, an employee's waiver of the attorney-client privilege...
Scrushy is acquitted
Former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard M. Scrushy was found not guilty today by the jury in the trial over over his alleged participation in a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at the huge health services company. Along with the sentencings in...
While Theodore Sihpol goes home, William Fuhs goes to jail
Continuing relentlessly to avoid addressing the real issue, this NY Times article speculates that the problem with Eliot Spitzer's recent unsuccessful prosecution of Theodore C. Sihpol, III was not that he charged Mr. Sihpol in the first place, but that...
George Melloan on the Andersen decision
George Melloan is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal, where he is responsible for the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal Europe and The Asian Wall Street Journal and writing a weekly column called Global View. Mr. Melloan...
The similarity of Russian and U.S. prosecutions of business figures
Former billionaire Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison yesterday by a Russian court in a case that businesspersons from around the world have followed carefully as a sign of the Russian government's willingness to...
Sentencing run amok
The Chronicle's Mary Flood reports today on recent developments in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case, in which four former Merrill Lynch executives and one former Enron executive are awaiting sentencing after being convicted last year of wire fraud and conspiracy...
Dynegy settles class action claims
Former Enron suitor Dynegy Inc. has agreed to pay $468 million to settle a class action suit that accused the Houston-based company and several of its former officers and directors of conspiring to cook the company's books to mislead investors....
Fifth Circuit issues its first post-Booker decision
In its first decision since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Booker that overruled the mandatory nature of the federal sentencing guidelines, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on this past Friday explained how Booker issues are to...
Enron saga turns Grisham
This Weekend Advisor column in the Wall Street Journal ($) advises us that the market for books on the Enron scandal has not been all that great. The best book on the subject to date -- Bethany McLean and Peter...
Lea Fastow's motion to reduce sentence is denied
The Chronicle's Mary Flood, who continues to do a fine job of covering the Enron scandal, posted this article today regarding U.S. District Judge David Hittner's denial of Lea Fastow's motion to reduce her one year sentence for misdemeanor tax...
Report on the 5th Circuit argument in the sad case of Jamie Olis
Ann Woolner of Bloomberg.com attended the Fifth Circuit oral argument on the appeal of Jamie Olis' sentence and files this report. She is optimistic, as I am, that the Fifth Circuit will reverse Olis' 24 year sentence and remand his...
The same old Enron story
Following on this earlier post regarding the new Enron documentary Smartest Guys in the Room, the Houston Press' Joe Leydon is breathless in praising the documentary: Please don't misunderstand: Alex Gibney has no great beef with capitalism. Indeed, many of...
The sad case of Jamie Olis gets even sadder
This Dallas Morning News article reports that the sad case of Jamie Olis, the mid-level Dynegy executive who was sentenced to a 24 year prison sentence last year for attempting to prove his innocence on accounting fraud charges, has taken...
More on the SCOTUS sentencing guidelines decision
The dust is settling on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision yesterday in United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan that the federal sentencing guidelines are unconstitutional because they violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be tried by...
Update on the sad case of Jamie Olis
David Gerger, appellate counsel for former Dynegy finance employee Jamie Olis filed Mr. Olis' appellant's brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this week in which Mr. Gerger contends that Mr. Olis' conviction and 24-year prison sentence should be...
Chuck Watson settles with Dynegy
Dynegy founder and former chief executive officer Chuck Watson and his chief operating officer -- Steve Bergstrom -- will receive a combined $32 million in severance payments under a settlement of their severance claims with the company. Mr. Watson will...
Criminalizing business
Gil Weinrich has a piece at TCS Central that proposes a different approach to punishment of corporate wrongdoers: Our society does a poor job of penalizing [corporate] crime. . . In the white-collar arena, the unrequited losses endured by victims...
Blakely Redux
With strong prompting from the Justice Department, the issues regarding the validity of federal and state sentencing guidelines generated by the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Blakely v. Washington decision are going to be teed up again soon in the Supreme...
The Chesnoffs are everywhere
On the heels of my earlier post today on Richard Chesnoff's NY Daily News op-ed, I clicked on the television to watch Martha Stewart's statement after her sentencing. Much to my surprise, my old friend David Chesnoff -- one of...
More decisions on Blakely
The decisions are coming down fast and furious from the various Circuits Courts of Appeal in regard to the recent Supreme Court Blakely decision, which was noted in these earlier posts. Professor Berman over at Sentencing Law and Policy is...
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This LA Times article is the best analysis that I have seen to date regarding what occurred in the sad case of former mid-level Dynegy accountant Jamie Olis that resulted in the absurd 24 year sentence for Mr. Olis. In...
Seventh Circuit decision on Blakely
Highly-regarded Circuit Judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote the majority and dissenting opinions in this recent decision (U.S. v. Booker) interpreting the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in U.S. v. Blakely. In...
Update on Lay indictment
It looked like a video campsite outside the Federal Courthouse in Houston on Thursday as the media gathered to observe the spectacle of former Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay being led into the courthouse in handcuffs. Mr. Lay pled...
SCOTUS sentencing decision reviewed
In this article, the Wall Street Journal ($) does a good job of summarizing the initial reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week in Blakely v. Washington, a decision that could have major implications for the federal sentencing...
Thoughtful piece on criminalization of business
Professor Ribstein -- who is the blogosphere's foremost commentator on the troubling trend in the government's criminalization of business -- points us to this interesting this New York Times Magazine article in which novelist Mark Costello (most recently ''Big If'')...
The new definition of "cooperation"
This timely Wall Street Journal ($) article reports on the government's new pressure tactic in investigating and prosecuting business crimes -- pressuring businesses to condition the business' support of its employees who are under investigation on the employee's cooperation with...
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This Wall Street Journal ($) article is the most thorough report yet on the sad case of Jamie Olis, the 38 year old former Dynegy mid-level tax manager who was convicted and recently sentenced to over 24 years in federal...
Update on the sad case of Jamie Olis
This Chronicle story reports that former Dynegy executive Jamie Olis has been ordered to begin serving his 24-year prison sentence on May 20th for participating in an accounting scheme to disguise a $300 million loan as cash flow for Dynegy....
More on the sad case of Jamie Olis
Larry E. Ribstein is the Richard & Marie Corman Professor of Law University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. Professor Ribstein runs an interesting business law blog called Ideoblog, and yesterday he posted this timely item about a CLE...
Holman Jenkins on the sad case of Jamie Olis
As noted on this blog before, Holman Jenkins is one of America's most insightful commentators on business issues. In his Wall Street Journal ($) column today, Mr. Jenkins addresses the injustice that occurred recently in the 24 year sentence given...
Update on the Jamie Olis sentencing
Following up on this earlier post on the sad case of Jamie Olis, the sentence is in -- 24 years. Here is the NY Times article on the sentencing....
The sad case of Jamie Olis
This NY Times article reports on the sad case of a former midlevel executive of Houston-based Dynegy, the energy company that attempted to merge with Enron and then called off the deal shortly before Enron filed bankruptcy in December, 2001....
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'sad case of Jamie Olis'. [What is this?]
