More than 5,000 jobs and $1 billion in employee retirement funds were wiped out when Enron plunged into bankruptcy in December 2001. Investors sued to recover more than $40 billion in market losses.
Skilling is incarcerated in a federal prison in Englewood, Colorado, outside of Denver.
Retrial Sought
Petrocelli, Skilling’s attorney, told Lake at a hearing last May that the former executive deserved a new trial because prosecutors failed to turn over potentially exonerating evidence that could have influenced Skilling’s trial. The government provided some of the materials to Skilling during his appeal.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Skilling’s appeal and agreed that his conviction was based in part on an invalid legal theory known as the “theft of honest services.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans reviewed his case in 2011 and determined there was enough other trial evidence to convict Skilling without the flawed theory. The appellate court upheld the verdicts against Skilling and ordered Lake to recalculate his sentence, having earlier found that sentencing guidelines were misapplied in his case.
News that Skilling was in talks to reduce his sentence surfaced in early April, after the Justice Department posted a public notice on its website. The notice requested comments by April 17 from “Enron employees, stockholders and other victims” regarding an unspecified “sentencing agreement” with an unnamed defendant.
Harlan Protass, a partner at Clayman & Rosenberg LLP in New York who briefly represented one of the friends of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, said the judge in Skilling’s case has the ultimate authority to decide on sentencing.
The case is U.S. v. Causey, 04-00025, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).