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 a scheduling conference this afternoon in Houston in the sad case of Jamie Olis in an effort to kick-start the resentencing of Olis that the Fifth Circuit ordered seven months ago after throwing out Judge Lake’s original 24-year sentence of Olis.
Judge Lake, who has been preoccupied with a rather long trial in another case over the past several months, is not the type of judge to allow pending matters to linger on his docket, so expect him to use today’s hearing to schedule a final resentencing hearing in the near future. The key issue in the resentencing is the amount of market loss attributable to the transaction on which Olis’ conviction is based, and the prosecution has been dragging its feet since the resentencing was ordered in an apparent effort to buttress its untenable market loss theory upon which Judge Lake based the original sentence of Olis. Judge Lake has not yet tipped his hand on how he intends to view the market loss issue on the resentencing of Olis, so today’s hearing may provide a forum for the judge to give the parties some direction for preparing the evidence on that key issue for the final resentencing hearing.