Class and justice in America: The Supreme Court and Enron felon Jeffrey Skilling

[Hannah Bell]

The US Supreme Court’s treatment of convicted Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling is an object lesson on the social interests upheld by the US judiciary and the class divisions that dominate every aspect of American life.

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Skilling’s appeal of his 2006 conviction for fraud and conspiracy in connection with the December 2001 collapse of the energy giant Enron, then the seventh largest corporation in the country...

When this corporate criminal went before the high court, he found a sympathetic audience. Two of the nominal liberals, Stephen Breyer and Obama appointee Sonia Sotomayor, declared they were deeply concerned over the trial judge’s “truncated,” in Sotomayor’s words, handling of jury selection. They were echoed by the “swing” justice, Anthony Kennedy.

One of Skilling’s arguments for the overturning of his conviction and a new trial is the claim that he could not receive a fair trial in Houston and the trial judge failed to adequately vet the jurors for prejudice against Enron executives.

“I am worried about a fair trial in this instance,” said Justice Breyer...

Three justices from the right-wing bloc on the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia, homed in on the other issue raised by Skilling—the claim that a law used in his conspiracy conviction, the so-called “honest services” statute, is unconstitutional....

The chief question arising from the hearing appears to be not whether the court will rule in Skilling’s favor, but how sweeping its ruling will be. As the Los Angeles Times wrote on Tuesday, “The Supreme Court justices … strongly hinted Monday that they were likely to overturn conviction, at least in part, because it rested on the notion that he cheated shareholders of his ‘honest services...’”

The contrast between the court’s solicitousness toward Skilling and its attitude to ordinary people caught up in the criminal justice system could not be starker. For working class and poor people accused of crimes, the system is a nightmare of indifference and arbitrariness, where genuine due process is a chimera...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/skil-m05.shtml

[Indy Lurker]

1. Justice may be blind, but it can smell money..... nt

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. No question!

I have seen it with my own eyes on dozens of occasions on a local level.

[Tansy_Gold]

2. The rich get richer

And the poor get thrown in jail for no other crime than being poor.

Skilling is nothing less than a perfect example of an ideology which believes wealth is a sign of God's grace. Obviously God wanted Jeffrey Skilling to be filthy, disgustingly, obscenely rich or He wouldn't have permitted the various thefts and lies. And what mere mortal has the right to undo what God hath wrought? After all, if God had thought Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, the leaders of the Enron Ponzi scheme and subsequent collapse, were doing wrong, wouldn't He have struck them dead?

Oh, wait, what was it that happened to Ken Lay?



Tansy Gold, who could almost believe in divine retribution in this case (because she does NOT believe in assinine "Ken Lay is Alive and Well and Hiding Out in Costa Rica" conspiracy theories).

[Champion Jack]

3. "what was it that happened to Ken Lay?"

You mean the guy who "died" and was cremated within 24 hours and nobody saw the body? He's hanging out in a spacious villa on the bush compound in Uruguay. The plastic surgery has healed nicely and you wouldn't recognize him. Of course that was the whole point of the exercise.

[ThomWV]

4. And would you modify the justice system so that rich men do not have access to it?

Aside from a questionable source just what is it about the apeal process that you find objectionable? If a person feels their jury was not properly selected do they not have a right to challenge their conviction? And other questions that might be raised, would you deny the opportunity to raise them before a high court because of a person's wealth?

In short would you simply reverse the tyranny you see? That seems to be what the article suggests - that is wrong when a rich man avails himself of the legal system because it is difficult for a poor man to do the same. That is a hard argument to win.

[blindpig]

6. What a joke

The false separation of the economic from the political makes this travesty inevitable.

hey, ya'll got the vote, you're equal to any other person, what more do ya want?

Yeah. Right. Sure.