Prosecutors respond to Skilling appeal

Prosecutors respond to Skilling appeal

	Published : Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:46 By : Agencies Print this Story

HOUSTON (AP) - Federal prosecutors said former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling does not deserve a new trial and should continue serving his are asonable' prison sentence of 24 years.

In a 218-page response to Skilling's September appeal of his conviction, prosecutors said the former Enron executive had a fair trial before an impartial jury and he received 'a reasonable sentence for his multiple crimes.' The response was filed Tuesday.

In their 242-page appeal, Skilling's attorneys asked for a new trial, accusing the Justice Department of using incorrect legal theories and 'coercive and abusive tactics' to win a conviction, including threatening witnesses and destroying documents.

'Yet nowhere in (Skilling's appeal) does Skilling challenge the sufficiency of the evidence against him,' prosecutors wrote. 'Indeed, the conduct for which the jury convicted Skilling was neither ambiguous nor novel, and the testimonial and documentary evidence presented at trial showed beyond a reasonable doubt that Skilling repeatedly violated the law....'

Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling's attorney, did not immediately return a telephone call on Tuesday.

Skilling was sentenced in October 2006 to more than 24 years in prison for his role in the collapse of Enron Corp., once the nation's seventh-largest company. He was convicted in May 2006 on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors.

Skilling's co-defendant, Enron founder Kenneth Lay, died from heart disease in July 2006. Lay's convictions on 10 counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in two separate cases were wiped out with his death.

Skilling began serving his sentence at a federal prison in Minnesota in December.

He became the highest-ranking executive to be punished for the accounting tricks and shady business deals that led to the loss of thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in Enron stock value and more than $2 billion in employee pension plans after the company imploded in 2001.

Skilling's appeal argued there was no tangible evidence he engaged in criminal misconduct. It said legal blunders led to his conviction, including faulty jury instructions and the trial court's decision not to move the proceedings out of Houston.

In their response, filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, prosecutors denied all of Skilling's claims.

Skilling's attorneys argued his conspiracy conviction should be overturned because it is based on an erroneous fraud theory known as honest services.

In August 2006, the 5th Circuit reversed several convictions of four former Merrill Lynch executives found guilty of helping engineer Enron's 1999 fraudulent sale of mobile power plants.

The court said the executives were doing what Enron wanted them to do and did not profit at its expense. As a result, the court ruled, they did not deprive Enron of 'honest services.'

But prosecutors argued in their court filing Tuesday that this prior ruling doesn't apply to Skilling.

'Skilling was Enron's president and CEO, and he hatched the scheme to defraud and directed others to carry it out; the scheme would not have occurred unless he had conceived and directed it,' prosecutors wrote.

The jury was given proper instructions during the trial, prosecutors argued, including one in which the panel was allowed to consider whether Skilling committed a criminal act just by looking the other way when problems at Enron were apparent.

Prosecutors also denied Skilling's claims that they engaged in any misconduct.