Global Crime judged by a local jury.

Ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling's sentencing hearing of October 23, 2006, in the Bob Casey UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE, 515 Rusk Avenue, HOUSTON:  United States District Court, Southern District of Texas, Courtroom 9B.

http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/enron_sentencing/index.html

Nearing the end of the public hearing where seven sceduled Enron-victims and two Enron-strategy defenders had addressed the Court, U.S. District Justice Sim Lake allowed for two extra unlisted speakers to express concerns and take the stand. Yours truely became the last person to possibly clarify confusion in the world's most obvious accounting-scandal trial that triggered new codes of conduct following the subsequent 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act for ethical behavior and so-called 'good governance'. (compare 'incorporated governance' elsewhere on this anti-tank thinking portal)

www.economist.com/background/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6838617

*  www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim_Lake

 Justice lake: "Please come forward and state your name".

* U.S. District-Judge Sim Lake is a former environmental litigator with Fulbright & Jaworski and was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1988. He earned his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1969 and was a U.S. Army officer from 1970-71. Lake earns consistently high ratings from Houston-area lawyers in the Houston Bar Association's annual judicial preference poll. Nearly two years ago he sentenced former Dynegy finance executive Jamie Olis to 24 years in prison for his role in pushing through a 2001 scheme to disguise debt as cash flow. In October 1999, he sentenced former day trader Alton Dane Hudnall to 25 years in prison for conspiring with five others to defraud 500 European investors of $53 million in a money laundering scheme. Hudnall was convicted of 26 counts of money laundering, 17 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In June 1995, lake sentenced former Houston socialite Teresa Rodriquez to nearly 22 years in prison on 36 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering for bilking 375 investors of $69 million.

Stephan Tychon:  'Thank you, Your Honor, for letting me speak on this occasion, my name is Stephan Tychon, Chief Officer of Change of the World Stability Council, Bruxxelles.'

'Your Honor, I am disappointed about the Court's global view and fundamental lack of overview concerning international business matters'.

Judge Lake: ' Did you write the Court a letter on this?'

'Your Honor, I had a pre-trial interview with one of the federal prosecutors (Cliff Stricklin, one of the four Enron Task Force attorneys) and expressed concerns of lacking global overview in energy matters.... ' ...previously registered with the U.S. Attotney General Jeminez in Miami (March 31, 2004)...see Exxon-related scope of the Enron-scandal under 'Exxon Task Force'.

 Cliff Stricklin: Enron Task Force federal prosecutor www.usdoj.gov/usao/co/cliff_stricklin_bio.pdf

At this time a female U.S. Marshall signals to immediately stop, so I bruskly turned away without even thanking the Judge, to decidedly regain my seat.

As these were the last words spoken by a representative of the public in this landmark process, I still feel honored to have been able to do so, even while explaining my point of view was made impossible... factual evidence is officially registered and could be of good use for Skilling's appeal to unravel the tangled crime of the global Complexxon:

Just after Judge Lake adjourned the Court's sentencing hearing, I spoke -still being in the courtroom-  with the director of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force, lead prosecutor and former white collar criminal defense and securities fraud attorney Sean Berkowitz who advised me to follow-up with Cliff Stricklin who is now No. 2 in the Denver U.S. Attorney's Office: the First Assistant U.S. Attorney, after receiving the Department of Justice's most prestigious award and Highest Honor, the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service. In August 2006, U.S. Attorney Troy Eid assigned Stricklin to head the trial team in the United States vs Joseph Nacchio.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Berkowitz

  DELAY 's KILLING US ALL !!

I feel locking-up U.S. intelligence and creativity does not advance this world. Instead it harms progressive innovation and just amounts to costs and harms to the global society that is under pressure of Exxon's Cheap-Oil Strategy where real change and progress for the greater good are structurally frustrated to say the least.

'The Last Word Not Said' is to be continued off-course by the Exxon Task Force and will take her to great lenght and the deepest depths. Just watch this for more to come!  

PRESIDING: Federal Judge Sim Lake's jury instructions surprised many. RICHARD CARSON/REUTERS

from the May 17, 2006 edition

"It's an extremely severe instruction, and one that's a very, very hot topic in the federal circuit right now," says Gerald Treece, assistant dean of the South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Several high-profile, white-collar convictions have recently been reversed on this issue at the circuit court level, including that of Frank Quattrone, a former investment banker at Credit Suisse First Boston. WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers' conviction is also on appeal related to this particular jury instruction.

While the "deliberately ignorant" instruction has been common in corporate trials, it is becoming more controversial as a growing number of convictions are overturned on this issue.

The US Supreme Court addressed it tangentially when it found that a judge's instructions allowed the jury to convict Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, without proving that the firm knew it broke the law.

In the case of the Enron executives, "this jury instruction will be the most fruitful area for reversal; it's a ticking time bomb for the prosecution," says David Berg, a Houston defense lawyer and author of "The Trial Lawyer: What It Takes to Win." "In every circuit in this country," he adds, "judges are emphasizing the need to prove that a defendant intended to commit criminal acts, not simply ignore them."

While Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling may not like the jury instruction if it results in convictions, they will certainly like it on appeal, says Mr. Berg.

In its closing arguments earlier this week, the government emphasized the deliberately ignorant instruction for the jury.

When The Wall Street Journal began to ask hard questions in September 2001 about the company's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, and the off-balance-sheet partnerships he created, Lay intentionally did not confront him, said prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler.

"Over and over again, Lay chose not to ask hard questions. He did so trying to stick his head in the sand, and the law says you cannot do that," she said.

Lay is charged with six counts of conspiracy and fraud and Skilling with 28 charges of conspiracy, fraud, and insider trading.

But even with the broad jury instruction, the hardest convictions to get will most likely be on the conspiracy charges, say legal experts.

"Conspiracy is always a difficult charge to prove because those involved don't sit around a smoke-filled room planning what they are going to do and taking notes," says Jacob Zamansky, a securities fraud lawyer in New York who attended much of the Enron trial.

Jurors will most likely begin with the other counts first, says Christopher Bebel, a former federal prosecutor and economic-crimes expert in Houston.

That's because the conspiracy counts rise and fall on finding guilt in individual acts committed to further the aims of the alleged conspiracy, he says.

Both Lay and Skilling say there was no conspiracy. In fact, they say that there was no crime at Enron - save for a greedy few.

But even if they are convicted of just one count each, their sentences are sure to be stiff. Judge Lake, for one, has already shown that he takes corporate fraud seriously.

He sentenced Jamie Olis, a former vice president of finance at Dynegy Inc., to 24 years in prison for his role in a $300 million accounting scam at the Houston energy firm.

Last year, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans threw out the sentence, but upheld the fraud conviction. Lake has not yet resentenced Mr. Olis.

"These men [Lay and Skilling] are going to be in jail for decades if convicted," says Mr. Zamansky. "We are beginning to take this type of crime much more seriously than we did 10 to 15 years ago."

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