Strong media coverage of Enron sentencing issues
As I predicted, the Enron conviction stories are now starting to turn to sentencing issues. And today both the Houston Chronicle and the AP have terrific stories about some key issues to be raised by the sentencing of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. Both stories rightly focus on the extraordinary importance of loss calculations under the federal sentencing guidelines, and I especially liked how Mary Flood starts her great Chronicle piece discussing the federal sentence process:
On their way to sentencing, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling will next be put under a microscope by a federal probation officer as their attorneys try to convince the judge that they didn’t cause shareholders to lose a penny — or at least not many pennies.
Sentencing in the federal courthouse has its own nearly indecipherable procedures. They are so complicated that experienced lawyers often disagree about what will likely happen. They do agree a probation officer will be assigned to look at everything from the men’s mental health and family history to financial assets and losses they caused.
Recent related Enron posts:
UPDATE: I now see that Peter Henning at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog has this interesting post entitled “The Parameters of CEO Sentencing.” Here are some of Peter’s many good insights:
The government’s memorandum for [WorldCom CEO Bernie] Ebbers sentencing sets out what I expect will be the likely approach of the Enron Task Force regarding a non-Guidelines analysis based on comparable sentences given in other cases to avoid sentencing “disparity,” one of the goals of the Guidelines. Here, the 25-year sentence imposed on Ebbers and the 15 years that the 80-year old [Adelphia CEO John] Rigas received could be argued by the government as the appropriate parameters of a “reasonable” sentence for Lay and Skilling, and prosecutors would be expected to seek a sentence at the higher end of that range.