Enron's Lay, Skilling broke no laws: lawyers

HOUSTON (Reuters) -

In closing statements at the federal criminal trial against Lay and Skilling, defense lawyers made a final, impassioned plea to the jury to reject prosecutors' charges that the two lied to investors to cover up the financial chaos at the company that imploded in 2001.

"The company failed, but it did not fail because of a fraud," Lay's lawyer Bruce Collins told the jury. "I'll grant you there are a lot of business decisions you could second guess in this case ... but those business judgments are not crimes."

. . .

Collins said Lay and Skilling face a huge number of civil lawsuits seeking compensation for decisions the two made as Enron plunged toward destruction, and those upcoming cases will determine whether they are guilty of bad business judgment.

"This is not that day. Today you decide whether Ken Lay is locked in a cage for the rest of his life. Today you decide whether Ken Lay is a criminal," Collins said.

Skilling and Lay, who showed little reaction to the government's closing argument on Monday, nodded and smiled at several points during the defense team's presentation.

http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=ousiv&storyID=2006-05-16T214307Z_01_N16428799_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESSPRO-ENRON-TRIAL-DC.XML

Criminal? Locked in a cage? Sounds ok to me.

How dare they.

The Democrats are criminalizing politics. --Tom DeLay

Hmmm, I think our MBA president learned the same damn thing in school, too.

Martha Stewart!

and could not believe how incredibly devoid of humanity Lay and Skilling are. They're criminals. Totally and completely.

they could be, and I suspect that they are, but it's still a movie.

and it's an outstanding documetary, if you're interested in learning what these assholes did from a technical business standpoint.

articles which broke the Enron scandal.
Also, book of the same name.
The documentary speaks to Enron employees, plus has, and this is the most damning part, the audio of the traders as they were manipulating the energy rates in California.
So ugly you can't believe these people actually exist.

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And these asses love it!

Lay and Skilling are assholes who deserve to rot in jail, but our adversarial system of justice wouldn't work very well if defence attorneys got too enthusiastic in conceding defeat.

through out the trial and the jury surely noticed this. They should be locked away in a cage. Yet those who lost their life savings will never be the same again. Both Lay and Skilling should lose every penny they have and should be made to stand on a street corner with a tin cup begging for money.

What a crock! Yet the judicial system sent Martha Stewart to "cupcake prison," and ankle-banded her for months...for fear of her "danger" to us all. A criminal whose crimes...so puny in comparison to what Enron thugs did...money stolen, multitude of other lives ruined forever by Skillings/Lay theft.

White collar crime! Enron-type crime makes street criminals look like inexperienced school boys.

Poor babies! Waaa...waaa!

the possible outcome? They're toast? They'll walk? 50/50?

Seems to me if they were offered a decent deal they would have jumped.

So basically that deflates the defense's argument that Lay and Skilling didn't know. The judge basically said they should have known and should have corrected the situation.

So the jury can decide they did it deliberately, they did it unknowingly, or they are innocent.

Doesn't look good for the defense.

I read the Wall Street Journal's story on the trial today, and the reporter said that Lay and Skilling have sort of downplayed the "we didn't know" defense, which hasn't worked out very well for other robber barons. Their attorneys have been playing up the "ain't no crime been committed here" defense, and to hear them tell it, Enron's still in business, Arthur Andersen accountants are still crunching numbers, and thousands of hard-working Enron employees are still drawing regular paychecks and looking forward to a comfortable retirement on their Enron-guaranteed pensions.

At one point, one of the defense lawyers asked the jury to look into the defendants’ eyes: Do they look like criminals to you? :rofl:

Well gee, counselor, the way Mr. Skilling is casually gnoshing on that baby and the way Mr. Lay just ripped the head off that puppy, I’d have to say, uhm . . . YES! They DO look like criminals!

Both Skilling and Lay were pushing the "didn't know" theme until the prosecution presented emails proving they were warned by support staff. Yes after that they quickly started pushing the defense that they didn't do anything wrong.

Oh well, its in the jury's hands now.

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Don't drop the soap asshole!