On the heels of the 10th Circuit’s scathing decision last month setting aside the convictions of former Westar Energy executives David Wittig and Douglas Lake, this Greg Burns/Chicago Tribune article reports that the legal tug-of-war between U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson and the appellate court over her handling of the criminal cases against Wittig continues.
As Burns reports, Judge Robinson re-sentenced Wittig earlier in the week to 24 months in prison on a bank fraud conviction that was not related to the larger prosecution of Wittig and Lake in regard to Westar. Judge Robinson handed down that sentence despite the fact that the 10th Circuit had already struck down two of her previous sentences on that charge, the most recent of which suggested that the sentence on the charge should be a maximum of six months. Wittig has already served over a year in prison.
Beyond his reporting on Wittig and the Westar-related criminal cases, Burns’ article is well worth reading simply for the depth of his analysis of how the prosecutions reflect the questionable nature of the regulation-of-business-through-criminalization policy that the federal government and state actors such as Eliot Spitzer adopted after the bursting of the stock market bubble at the beginning of this decade. As Burns notes, the Westar prosecutions have played more on widespread resentment of wealthy businesspersons than on clear lines of criminal liability. Such analysis is a refreshing change of perspective from what much of the mainstream media serves up about prosecutions of business interests.