Economist James Buchanan won a Nobel Prize for his work on applying economics to explain how incentives impact the behavior of government officials. In short, Buchanan concluded that government officials are people who behave in the same selfish manner as most folks. For example, when dealing with the government’s awesome prosecutorial power, prosecutors often could care less about discretion and justice. Rather, they often use that power to advance their personal interests, to extort tribute from the private sector, to blackmail politicians into increasing prosecutorial resources and privileges, and to manipulate the media in their favor.
The foregoing seems to be an apt explanation of what continues to go on in the Enron-relates debacle known as the Nigerian Barge case:

A federal prosecutor wants a former Merrill Lynch & Co. executive to serve the entire prison term imposed for five Enron-related crimes even though three of those convictions were overturned by an appeals panel last year.
But lawyers for James Brown say the prosecutor is pushing to incarcerate their client for the remainder of his three-year, 10-month term because he has refused to plead guilty to another felony and possibly testify against two co-defendants.

Read about the entire tawdry affair. Brown’s perjury and obstruction of justice convictions were upheld in this Fifth Circuit decision that reversed the convictions against him and his co-defendants on the other three charges. However, Judge Harold DeMoss’ dissent lucidly explains just how flimsy the convictions on the perjury and obstruction charges are:

[The majority decision relies on] two types of evidence [to support the convictions of Brown on the perjury and obstruction charges]: (1) business negotiations preceding a deal ultimately reduced to a written agreement and (2) an after-the-fact oversimplification and shorthand description of the barge partnership investment by Merrill employees during the discussion and evaluation of a subsequent and entirely unrelated deal. Neither of these types of evidence should be used to support an inference of the falsity of Brownís testimony.

After what the prosecution has put Brown and his Merrill Lynch co-defendants through, the prosecution’s continued pursuit of this case borders on the barbaric. Here’s hoping that Judge Ewing Werlein rejects the prosecution’s continued pursuit of this Enron-related witch hunt in the same manner as he rejected the prosecution’s original over-the-top sentencing recommendations. Perhaps a few decision of that nature would induce some adult supervision to return to the Department of Justice.