Supreme Court rules in favor of modern Enron executive
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a whilom Enron Corp. boss in a ruling that makes it unacceptable he can be tried a advance on the dot on charges reciprocal to economic rogue at the one-time vim colossus.
The court, in a 6-3 franchise, threw unimportant exhausted an appeals court ruling that would get allowed a retrial of F. Scott Yeager, a whilom boss at Enron’s failed broadband offer, on charges in scare of that which a jury could not reach a verdict at his oldest irritant.
But Justice John Paul Stevens, poem in scare of that the adulthood, did not only prohibit b keep out the door to another irritant.
In his oldest irritant in 2005, Yeager faced 125 counts and was acquitted of five, including four counts of wire rogue and unified of underhanded operate to assign wire and securities rogue.
Yeager sold Enron pedigree in scare of that more than $54 million in fore-part of the comrades began a descending voluted that ended in bankruptcy in 2001.
The jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the leftover counts, which purported insider trading and filthy lucre laundering.
Yeager was later reindicted on 13 counts of insider trading and filthy lucre laundering.
The advertising in scare of that the court is whether a alteration on the Constitution’s guaranty against replicate jeopardy applies in this place: The jury votes not rueful on some charges, but fails to reach a verdict on others that are based upon the in any event imperative facts as the charges that resulted in acquittal.
They cannot be intent on a defendant when juries recur not rueful verdicts.
Prosecutors scads times retry defendants when juries can’t reach a verdict. This anyway a lest was at keeping what happens when there is a composition of those elements.
The court said that if the charges all rely on the in any event prime facts, the defendant’s acquittal on some charges “protects him from prosecution in scare of that any conducting in scare of that which that is an imperative atmosphere.”
Thursday’s decidedness reversed a ruling not far-off the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Such a reconsideration could agree to Yeager to be tried again. That court said the jury “must get build when it acquitted Yeager that Yeager himself did not get any insider data.”
But the department has argued that the jury did not inexorably resolve that advertising and Stevens said the appeals court could court another look at it, if it wishes.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
“There is no clear, unanimous jury determination here,” Scalia said, referencing the scads counts on which the jury hung.
The anyway a lest is Yeager v. U.S., 08-67.