Free Republic

<p>Why else would a judge clear his record, columnist asks.</p> <p>I sometimes hear that Elvis Presley isn't really dead, a notion supported by the alleged sightings of "The King" at various shopping malls around the United States.</p> <p>I've heard the same thing about Tupac Shakur, the rap star who died in a hail of gunfire in Las Vegas 10 years ago. No one claims to have seen Tupac at a shopping mall. But the amount of music and the two feature movies released after his reported death make me think he's not really dead either.</p>

Lawyers likely to argue that entire case has effectively been voided BARRIE MCKENNA WASHINGTON -- Kenneth Lay's sudden death could prove to be an unexpected legal bequest to Jeffrey Skilling, his co-defendant in the landmark Enron Corp. fraud case. Mr. Skilling's legal team will almost certainly invoke Mr. Lay's demise to try to reverse his own fraud and conspiracy conviction or demand a retrial, legal experts said yesterday. That's because Mr. Lay's death Wednesday of an apparent heart attack effectively voids the entire case against the Enron founder, including the guilty verdict. Mr. Skilling, the former Enron chief executive officer...

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Thursday he hopes Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay's "heart was right with the Lord" when he died before he could be sentenced on fraud and conspiracy charges. Bush called Lay, who was a friend of the Bush family and a large donor to the president's campaign, "a good guy." He said he was shocked to hear both about the Enron scandal and Lay's death this week from a heart attack at age 64. "I was really surprised," Bush said on CNN's "Larry King Live." "You know, my hope is that his heart was right with...

cause of death unknown

HOUSTON - Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were known as visionaries, hands-on executives, corporate titans directing the high-flying ship at Wall Street darling Enron Corp. Add another title: convicted felons. "Certainly we're surprised," a shaken Lay said Thursday after a jury capped a four-month-long fraud and conspiracy trial and in its sixth day of deliberations returned guilty verdicts against him and Skilling. "I think it's more appropriate to say we're shocked. This is not the outcome we expected." Besides all six counts in the main trial, Lay, Enron's founder, also was convicted of four charges of bank fraud and making...

Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron was convicted of fraud in the Enron case and faces the certainty that he will spend the rest of his life in jail, unless.... See the rest at the SactoDan BLOG.

Breaking on CNN.

HOUSTON - Yet another clash of Enron trial titans is on the horizon, but it may be less explosive than the first. While jurors deliberate the outcome of the fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, Lay is on trial again without a jury on charges stemming from his personal banking. The 64-year-old former chairman spent six days on the witness stand during the conspiracy trial, often combative and contentious with federal prosecutor John Hueston, who secured the indictment against Lay nearly two years ago. Lay is expected to square off...

HOUSTON - The automated signature machine did it. Attorneys for Kenneth Lay suggested bank loan documents containing terms he allegedly violated actually were signed by an automatic signature device in the Enron Corp. founder's office and not by him. Lay went on trial Thursday on one count of bank fraud and three counts of making false statements regarding personal banking issues. The trial, expected to wrap up as early as Tuesday, got under way the day after jurors began deliberating the nearly four-month-long fraud and conspiracy case of Lay and former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling. Lay is charged with...

HOUSTON - After exchanging some parting shots with his prosecutor, Kenneth Lay finished six days of testimony at his federal fraud and conspiracy trial Tuesday by professing love for Enron Corp., the company he founded, and the people who worked there. "I loved Enron very much," Lay said in a brief response to the final question from his lawyer, George Secrest. "And I loved Enron's employees very much. I spent half my professional life running Enron. I think we built a great company. We changed energy markets around the world. "I think the most painful thing in my life was...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Former Enron CEO Ken Lay sold $70 million in Enron shares back to the company to pay for personal luxuries such as renting a yacht for a birthday party, even as the company headed toward bankruptcy, prosecutors said on Monday. Lay, on trial for fraud and conspiracy along with former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, has said most of the stock sales were made to pay off his millions of dollars in debts. Under cross examination by prosecutor John Hueston, Lay admitted he and wife, Linda, lived the good life and had trouble giving it up, despite Enron's...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay was expected to charm jurors the same way he spent decades charming politicians, analysts, investors and employees. But when he took the witness stand this week in his fraud and conspiracy trial, the ever-smiling diplomat and philanthropist morphed into a scrappy fighter. First he tried to take control of questioning by his own lawyer. Then he repeatedly bristled, snarled and quarreled on cross-examination with the federal prosecutor who had secured the indictment against him. His transformation was in stark contrast to that of his co-defendant, former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling, whose lengthy...

HOUSTON - Federal prosecutors sought Thursday to torpedo Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay's image as a company champion, trying to show he used the ailing energy giant to bail himself out of personal financial woes in 2001. Lay obtained more than $70 million in loans from Enron throughout 2001 and repaid most with company stock, even as he encouraged employees to buy more shares. Lay didn't disclose those stock sales publicly because regulations required that sales of shares back to a company be reported only in the year after they occur. Unlike his co-defendant in his fraud and conspiracy trial,...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay dropped his famous affable persona as his cross-examination began Wednesday, snarling at a prosecutor who accused him of witness tampering when the ex-chairman and chief executive called several potential witnesses during his own fraud and conspiracy trial. Jurors who had been listening impassively snapped to attention. "Did you have any conversations to get your story straight for trial?" asked prosecutor John Hueston, equally primed for battle. "Can you elaborate on that Mr. Hueston?" Lay shot back. "I'm not sure what story you're talking about." The prosecutor noted that Lay called two Goldman Sachs...

HOUSTON – Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay declared his innocence Monday on the witness stand, somberly saying the company's legacy of lost jobs and wrecked retirement savings pained him even more than the loss of a loved one. Lay blamed the implosion of Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, on a series of devastating circumstances that included theft by the chief financial officer, negative press, a bear market and investor anxiety after the Sept. 11 attacks. “I don't think there ever was a conspiracy of any kind,” he said. His testimony, defending against criminal fraud and conspiracy charges that could...

HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay has embraced myriad roles in his life: economist, business visionary, Houston booster, philanthropist and smooth political gladhander among them. On Monday, he'll become his most important witness. "I'm looking forward to it," the 64-year-old ex-chairman said last week with the same confident smile he has displayed since his fraud and conspiracy trial began nearly three months ago. "I want to put more of the facts and the truth out about what happened at Enron." For the last two weeks, the trial's focus rested on often contentious testimony from Jeffrey Skilling, Lay's co-defendant and...

The former head of Enron's broadband business told jurors Tuesday that his mentor and friend Jeff Skilling pressured him to make his division appear to the public to be growing, even while the unit was in fact laying people off and had no revenues. Ken Rice, a 47-year-old Houstonian, said he repeatedly misled investors about the financial health of the company's Internet business. And he walked the jury through a March 2001 analyst conference call in which he said Skilling also repeatedly misrepresented the faltering division's health. On questioning by Enron Task Force Director Sean Berkowitz, Rice painted a picture...

(snip) After a spectacular collapse that left thousands jobless and slammed Wall Street with billions in losses, the firm's founder and former CEO are to be tried in a federal courthouse — only a few blocks from the firm's former headquarters with its swiveling "E" logo. More than 100 potential jurors were slated to pack a cavernous federal courtroom here on Monday, the first step in the trial of Kenneth Lay, 63, and Jeffrey Skilling, 52. (snip) Skilling faces 31 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors for allegedly lying about Enron's financial strength. Lay faces seven...

IN a world where executive perp walks have lost their novelty, where's the justice? Investors who have seen executives drive their companies off a cliff don't necessarily gain succor from such parades, or from the dry sentences and fines that may be doled out by a jury. They crave that deeper, more satisfying sense of justice that comes from seeing somebody get what they think he truly deserves. The difference between court justice and what I'd like to call "sublime justice" is not a difficult concept. But it's a bit nuanced, so here's an example. It seems that Kenneth L....

HOUSTON - The fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and chief accounting officer Richard Causey will begin Jan. 17, 2006, a federal judge said Thursday. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake set the trial date for what is expected to be the premiere case to emerge from the Justice Department's investigation of the disgraced company that became the bankrupt embodiment of scandal and fraud in December 2001. Lay and Skilling had agreed to support Causey's choice of a Dec. 1 trial to accommodate the preparation needs of all the legal teams. Lay has...