Convicted capitalist criminal and former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling says he was too detested in Houston to get a fair trial. He lives in a minimum security prison in Littleton now, far from the steel and glass corner offices of his past. His case is being heard by the Supreme Court.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was skeptical at the hearing today. The jurors answered questionnaires and they didn’t seem to know much at all about the complicated case.
Justice Stephen Breyer referred to the fact that throwing out the conviction might set an absurd precedent in the internet age. When all local news is global and streaming into cellphones, where will the courts find the uninformed semi-literate fools they need to serve on juries? Every conviction in the country could be overturned on these grounds– or at least all of the convictions of white collar criminals bankrolling the country’s most expensive attorneys!
“They’re on to us,” Skilling is alleged to have told a meeting of Enron executives in 2001 as things Enron started to go seriously south. “It seemed to indicate the investment community was beginning to understand how Enron made money,” Kevin Hannon, former chief finance officer told jurors.
The courtroom went pin-drop silent, the ghosts of the Californians who died as a result of Enron’s cutting off power there to manipulate energy prices, hovering in the air. It’s not just Houston that hated Jeff Skilling.
Skilling is an Urban Dictionary-defined “economic terrorist.” He deserves the full range of rights the United States is prepared to bestow on other accused terrorists.
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