Report on today’s Enron barge sentences

I‘m back on-line with lots to report after a day away.  Let me start with news from federal district courts, where we learn from this article the Judge Ewing Werlein, following the path he set out in prior sentencings (detailed here and here), imposed below-guideline sentences for three more defendants connected to the Enron Nigerian barge fraud case.  This development, considered also with this news report of two former executives of NewCom Inc. also receiving below-guideline sentences, brings up yet again the issues I raised in this post about whether we there is a distinctive pattern of leniency in white-collar cases post-Booker.

UPDATE:  Peter Henning at the White Collar Crim Prof Blog comments on the sentencings and related issues in this post.