US Supreme Court limits ability to prosecute corporate swindlers

[Hannah Bell]

The US Supreme Court has significantly restricted the ability of federal prosecutors to bring criminal charges against corrupt politicians and corporate CEOs who plunder their own companies, setting strict limits on the use of a 1988 law making it a crime for such officials to deprive constituents or shareholders of their “intangible right of honest services.”

The court took action on three cases brought under the “honest services” law, ordering lower courts to review the fraud convictions of jailed former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling, jailed publishing magnate Conrad Black, and former Alaska state legislator Bruce Weyhrauch.... Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinions on the Skilling and Black appeals, while the decision on Weyhrauch was issued without an opinion. Her ruling defines a new standard, limiting the “honest services” fraud charge to those cases where the politician or corporate executive receives a bribe or kickback.

This means that in those cases where the executive profits directly from his misconduct rather than taking money from an outside party—as in the cases of Skilling and Black, who reaped benefits from stockholdings, huge salaries and fees charged to their companies—the charge of fraud could not be brought.

While the nine justices gave different rationales for limiting the applicability of the “honest services” fraud charges in this way, that part of the decision for both Skilling and Black was backed by a unanimous 9-0 vote.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/skil-j25.shtml


read further on, you find a majority, including the libs, wanted to throw out all the charges against skilling.

i guess they're only libs when it comes to abortion -- but not where money's concerned.

[napi21]

1. Norman Goldman explained this SCOTUS decision on his show tonight.

It was Ginsburg who wanted to save the law. The RW wanted to eliminate it. She wrote it narowly to get some of the RW judges to sign on. The real problem is the way congress wrote the stupid law! It was way to broad. Ginsburg wanted to preserve the law because there are a lot of attorneys who use it in many cases where they win. In this case, it wasn't so much the SCOTUS being wrong but the CONGRESS AGAIN! I don't know if they're too lazy or too incompetant, but they write lawsasuming that the SC will deal with any problems with them.

[Angry Dragon]

2. Congress is too busy counting their money to worry about writting

or even passing good laws. Only so much time to steal money, only so much money

[Unvanguard]

3. Or maybe they believe in individual rights

yes, even for rich people.

:eyes:

[Hannah Bell]

4. or maybe just for rich people.

[Unvanguard]

6. Unconstitutionally-vague statutes can and have been invalidated before

that applied to all kinds of people.

It is standard doctrine, and in one form or another it got the unanimous approval of the Supreme Court. Even people you don't like are entitled to their constitutional rights.

[Rex]

7. Looks like just for rich people, unless anyone here knows of a

working poor person that won the lottery to be the CEO of a million dollar company!? I sure don't. I wonder which millionaire will run for office next to screw us over?

[Unvanguard]

15. Do you think it is okay to have laws abridging individual rights

as long as they principally target rich people?

[Bandit]

11. The right to plunder or take bribes as a legislator.

Yep that's the ticket..Except it would not apply to you or I.

[sea four]

5. The supreme court is just as sold out as the congress is. nt

[Major Hogwash]

8. Pretty fucking stupid decision, if you ask me. And I'm not even a fucking lawyer.

How the fuck do they do something like that?
Say that unless the profit wasn't direct, that it wasn't fraud?

What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Ever hear of "a slush fund"?
Or "money laundering"?

I mean, if the people who rip off millions of dollars aren't held to the same standards as the guy who robs a gas station for $35, then the mask of justice is peeking with one eye under the mask to check out their portfolios first -- and that ain't justice.

[Swamp Rat]

9. Time to build that guillotine

[unblock]

10. sounds like it was just a good idea but a bad law.

i guess the idea is that if you give a ceo a massive incentive such as "hey, if you make a ton of money for the company, we'll let you keep 10% of it, and if you lose it all, we'll never do worse than fire you", then you should not be surprised if the ceo just takes it all to the casino and puts it all on red.

it's not fraud if he's doing what you gave him a huge incentive to do.

the problem is not fraud but the incentive structure in the first place, which in turn is a problem because of the massive concentration of power of a huge corporation in the hands of one person, or a very small number of people, and the need to compensate them to ridiculous levels. disperse the power, lower the compensation, and these problems are vastly reduced.


all this said, i'm surprised they couldn't find a more straightforward securities fraud charge against skilling. he made misrepresentations against investors in each of the securities that were backed by enron stock, THOSE investors (not the investors of enron stock itself) were more clearly victims of fraud. a conviction based on that would more easily stand up and skilling would get what he deserves.

[conspirator]

12. I don't recognize courts anymore. they are corporate n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

13. Disgraceful. The Supreme Court is out of touch with ordinary Americans.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

14. Skilling, Black and Weyhrauch.

:think:

[jotsy]

16. I'm so glad I haven't had breakfast.

I responded to a couple of threads about this yesterday, but to learn this morning that it was a unanimous ruling for this crap makes me want to hurl.

The spirit of justice seems to be absent in the rule of law, now maligned to serve the rulers of apparent order.

[indepat]

17. The felonious ones just keep getting feloniouser and feloniouser

even though surely the must already be among the felonioust to walk the face of the earth in modern times. :P

[starroute]

18. But it really was a crappy, overbroad law

I'm still not sure I've got it clear, but the problems seems to be with the idea of "theft of services." The law assumed that if a politician or CEO uses his position to enrich himself, he's taking the money out of the pockets or shareholders -- but that just isn't the way it typically works.

To use what I think is an analogous situation, if a cop expects to get free coffee and donuts at the local coffee shop every morning, there's certainly something wrong with that -- but he isn't taking money out of the pockets of the taxpayers. And the coffee shop owner isn't paying bribes or being exported, because the cop would presumably chase down crooks even without the free donuts. The cop is simply taking advantage of a kind of traditional perk that goes along with the job.

Raise that to the level of a governor or CEO, and you've definitely got a problem that needs to be addressed. But it's still not clear exactly what the crime is or who the victims are. This country has a long tradition of politicians who managed to enrich themselves on the job while still serving their constituents perfectly adequately.

[Nikki Stone1]

19. K & R

.

[Blue Owl]

20. They deserve a vacation

Some snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico could really be relaxing for the SCROTUS five.