The Enron Broadband trials were not the Enron Task Force’s finest hour (see also here and here).

Now that the Task Force has been disbanded, Justice Department attorneys are left to pick up the pieces of the Task Force’s shattered cases and, as the Chronicle’s Kristen Hays reports from the Fifth Circuit, it’s not an easy task.

Sort of what you would expect from cases in which the government asserted an unwarranted expansion of a criminal law intended to punish kickbacks and bribes against businessmen who did no such thing.

Criminal convictions based primarily on juror resentment of wealthy businessmen tend not to hold up well under the bright light of appellate scrutiny.