Prosecutorial Abuse
Tom Kirkendall has stayed on the case of Enron Task Force prosecutorial abuse even while most of the world has turned away, apparently believing that "mission accomplished" (ie putting Skilling in jail) justifies about any set of shady tactics.
But the evidence continues to grow that Skilling did not get a fair trial. We know that the task force bent over backwards to pressure exculpatory witnesses from testifying for Skilling, but now we find that prosecutors may have hidden a lot of exculpatory evidence from the defense.
Meanwhile, continuing to fly under the mainstream media's radar
screen is the growing scandal relating to the Department of Justice's
failure to turnover potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense
teams in two major Enron-related criminal prosecutions (see previous
posts here and here). The DOJ has a long legacy of misconduct in the Enron-related criminal cases that is mirrored by the mainstream media's myopia in ignoring it (see here, here, here, here and here).This motion
filed recently in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge criminal case
describes the DOJ's non-disclosure of hundreds of pages of notes of FBI
and DOJ interviews of Andrew Fastow, the former Enron CFO who was a key prosecution witness in the Lay-Skilling trial and a key figure in the Nigerian Barge trial.Enron Task Force prosecutors withheld the notes of the Fastow
interviews from the defense teams prior to the trials in the
Lay-Skilling and Nigerian Barge cases. If the Fastow notes turn out to
reflect that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence or induced
Fastow to change his story over time, then that would be strong grounds
for reversal of Skilling's conviction and dismissal of the remaining
charges against the Merrill Lynch bankers in the Nigerian Barge case.
The post goes on to describe pretty substantial violations of FBI rules in handling interviews with Fastow, including destruction of some of the Form 302's summarizing early interviews. The defense hypothesis is that Fastow changed his story over time, particularly vis a vis Skilling's involvement, under pressure from the task force and the 302's were destroyed and modified to hide this fact from the defense, and ultimately the jury.
