The Fifth Circuit’s decision yesterday reminded us of the angry mob that lynched Jeff Skilling.

Now, as this timely Roger Parloff/Fortune article notes, an even larger mob is gathering to lynch the businesspeople who were attempting to save their companies in the wake of last year’s financial meltdown on Wall Street:

The level of fury surrounding these inquiries is of a different order from what we saw with, say, the backdating scandals or the Enron and WorldCom failures. Today’s credit collapse has already vaporized about $9 trillion in investment capital, while ripping another trillion in assorted bailout money from the pockets of enraged taxpayers – also sometimes known as "jurors."

Based on the Fifth Circuit’s Skilling decision, those targeted businesspeople would be wise not to rely on the courts for protection from the mob.