Sympathy for Enron's Lay runs dry

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 7/6/6 | Kathleen Pender

[SmithL]

It's not nice to speak ill of the dead, but Kenneth Lay's passing elicited little sympathy from average Americans on Wednesday.

I spent much of the day trolling Internet message boards and blogs, polling Chronicle readers and talking to legal and other sources, trying to get a sense of how the public feels about Lay's death and how it will affect the legal proceedings against him.

Lay was the former chairman and CEO of Enron, a name that became synonymous with corporate greed and wrongdoing, sparking a major reform movement in Congress. Enron also played a lead role ripping off California electricity users during the energy crisis, according to several investigations.

I'll spare you the crudest jokes and try to summarize how people were reacting.

-- Lay got what he deserved. "That Karma stuff works!!!!!!!!!!!! CEOs that are cooking the books take heed," wrote a poster on MSNBC.com, obviously a fan of NBC's "My Name Is Earl."

-- Lay got off easy. "I don't fully understand the mechanics of this man's crimes. But I do understand that he died without paying the full and true price for them. It's too bad he didn't fittingly die alone in jail, but now he isn't our problem anymore. And it won't cost our psyches or tax-payer pocket books any more time or money," wrote Dan Ryan of Brisbane, a participant in The Chronicle's Two Cents reader response program.

"We as a culture want desperately to punish those who transgress our laws. We want criminals to suffer. It's why we have suicide watches in prisons. It's why we feel cheated at Kenneth Lay's death. You have to wonder why the death penalty is then the ultimate punishment. Because it's not the 'death' that is the punishment. It's the terror in anticipation of execution

[weegee]

"We as a culture want desperately to punish those who transgress our laws. We want criminals to suffer."

[weegee]

Locally there is already quite a bit of talk of that. And in civil court, the burden of proof is only 51% (not overwhelming evidence).

Ken Lay was guilty of either crooked dealings or negligence. Either probably puts him at liability.

[weegee]

They seem to be about on par for what the Left said of Reagan when he died.

[RikaStrom]

and it's gonna run drier now that it is circualting something about him dying early(gets off clean on the charges) and the family gets to keep the millions of dollars he acquired from robbing pensions

The way I heard it today, is that he is going to be buried and innocent man, because he had not been setenced yet, and the whole process must be done while a person is alive. So his death prior to sentencing voiced the conviction and he's buried innocent.

The the money thing is a little odd, but it's going to make watching this play out very interesting. If Lay left everything to the wife, she's entitled to 50% of it, so the government... might..only get 50%. But the government cannot go after anything the kids may have received in the will. So a smart lawyer would have had Lay change his will to leave everything to the kids, and the government is SOL.

Of course I have absolutely no idea if this is accurate or not, but it's what I heard on the radio this morning.

[GOPJ]

Terry McAuliffe turned $100,000 into $17million and no one blinks.

Outrage is selective in this world.

This is where the double standard really gets insulting... Both stories should have been covered.