Lay and Skilling Convicted
Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted on numerous counts of fraud but were acquitted on most counts of insider training. Professor Bainbridge has some quickie analysis.
I worked for Jeff Skilling for a brief period of time at McKinsey & Co. Jeff was easily one of the smartest men I ever met, as well as the most detail-oriented. It was this latter quality that forced me to concede that he was probably lying to Congress back when he said "I didn't know any of this stuff was going on in my organization." Whatever else they did, Lay and Skilling will never be forgiven by my family for sucking in a couple of our family friends who were not business people (doctors and such) onto the Enron board, perhaps as dupes who had no hope of crying foul at the complex business machinations that were taken place. Whatever the reason, our friends will spend the rest of their lives dealing with Enron lawsuits.
My only regret in this case is that I hate seeing some pretty scary prosecution practices get rewarded. The guilt of Lay and Skilling does not change the fact that we need to start reigning in heavy-handed prosecutors, and disavowing the Thompson memo would be a good start. Update: Tom Kirkendall has much more on prosecutorial abuse in this case and possible appeal points.
