DOJ may release Enron's Skilling 18 years early

Siegelman Judge Asked To Recuse As Kagan, Rove Oppose Reviews
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kreig/siegelman-judge-asked-to_b_534628.html

Both Leura and Bill Canary have issued statements denying wrongdoing. To defer to Alabama's two powerful Republican senators, the Obama administration has so far continued Canary in office after she served during the two Bush administrations as the president's top prosecutor in Alabama's middle district, covering the state capital region.

~snip~

A bipartisan group of 91 former state attorneys general from more than 40 states formed an unprecedented coalition to file a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court arguing it should hear Siegelman's case because his actions did not constitute a crime.

But Kagan, now widely reported as a leading candidate to ascend from her post as Justice Department solicitor general to become her friend Obama's nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy, urged the high court in November to deny Siegelman a hearing. Kagan used technical legal arguments devised with the assistance of DOJ's trial prosecutors.

~snip~

Kagan's stance already has created strong skeptics in progressive circles in Alabama, and is certain to irritate Siegelman supporters around the country if she is nominated to the Supreme Court. DOJ has requested that Fuller resentence Siegelman, now 64, to an additional 20 years in prison.

ExxonMobil’s Alabama Paydirt
http://harpers.org/blog/2007/11/exxonmobils-alabama-paydirt/

The State of Alabama believes that it was victimized by ExxonMobil. According to the state’s complaint launched by the Administration of Governor Don Siegelman, ExxonMobil committed fraud and underpaid the state in a contract dispute over natural gas pumped from Mobile Bay. Alabama won that litigation, and a jury awarded the state a judgment against ExxonMobil of roughly $3.6 billion. Not chump change, even for ExxonMobil. And for Alabama, an immense sum of money (roughly a third of the state’s annual budget).

But ExxonMobil appealed, secured a stay, and ultimately took the matter to the Alabama Supreme Court. Thursday, the state’s High Court handed down its decision, by a vote of 8-1. The Court sided with ExxonMobil and against Alabama. The punitive damage award was rejected, and Alabama was left with a compensatory award of $51.9 million, a pittance.

~snip~

Nevertheless, there is something very foul and unseemly in the air surrounding this decision. It expunged the punitive award altogether. And the decision was 8-1. Every Republican justice sided with ExxonMobil and the court’s sole Democrat sided with the state. This serves to underscore and highlight what really looks like a partisan and political divide. That also is extremely telling.

William Canary is a campaign partner of Karl Rove’s and worked with Rove in Alabama Court politics starting with 1992; Toby Roth, the former chief of staff to Governor Bill Riley was a third member of their team. The Rove-Canary-Roth team scored a series of quite astonishing successes, and in the end it totally transformed the Alabama court landscape, starting with the state’s Supreme Court. I have no reason to link Rove, Canary and Roth to the specific litigation between ExxonMobil and the State of Alabama in particular. But in broader terms, the ExxonMobil decision should be counted the ultimate triumph of the Rove-Canary-Roth game plan. It got the oil and gas community exactly what it was aiming for from the beginning: the elimination of punitive damage awards in commercial cases.

But the federal appeals court also reiterated an earlier ruling that Mr. Skilling still needed to have his sentence re-calculated because Judge Lake had erred in his handling of another issue in the case. That re-sentencing was put on hold while the broader appeal wended its way through the courts.