Skilling gets guideline sentence of 292 months

As well reported by Howard Bashman here, Judge Sim Lake sentenced Jeff Skilling at the low end of the (now advisory) 2000-era Guidelines range by imposing a sentence of 292 months of imprisonment (That’s 24 years and 4 months for those not good at dividing quickly by 12.)

Because Skilling was sentenced in the Fifth Circuit, his within-guideline sentence will be deemed presumptively reasonable on appeal (though I suppose Skilling could contest on appeal some guideline calculation issues).  Notably, I do not believe any other high-profile white-collar defendants have received a within-guideline sentence recently.  Though WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years, the guideline range in that case was life, I believe.

I have not heard if Judge Lake has plans for a written opinion in this case, but I hope he will write up an explanation for his various decisions.

UPDATE:  Ellen Podgor and Peter Henning at White Collar Crime Prof Blog have lots of interesting reactions here.  I found this comment by Peter especially provocative:

While Jeffrey Skilling receives 24 years for presiding over the collapse of Enron, former Congressman Randy (Duke) Cunningham sells his office to a string of defense contracts for a bit over $1 million and receives a sentence of 8 years.  Soon-to-be former Congressman Bob Ney will likely be sentenced to less than 3 years in prison for selling out his office to lobbyists led by Jack Abramoff.  How can there be such a disparity between the sentences for public corruption and the corporate frauds perpetrated by Ebbers and Skilling?