In a post at the Business Insider, Tom Kirkendall explains why Jeff Skilling's conviction might be reversed. It's a fantastic post. As an aside, why have so few people spoken out against the Enron prosecution?
Many criminal defense lawyers, faced with a brute who a tied up woman in his basement and raped her for several days before burning her alive, will say, "Society failed him!" Try talking to that same defense lawyer about the Enron prosecution, and you've just lost a drinking buddy.
Rich people, according to too many defense lawyers, are "white collar crooks who should hang." Largely, this view is the product of our racist society - and is especially a product of liberal racism. When poor (and often black) defendants commit violent acts, what can you do? Isn't that expected? If blacks commit violent misdeeds, that's because White America failed to nurture blacks - who can't, according to liberals, be expected to come into maturity on their own. Racism turns into reverse racism when white collar crime comes up.
Show society a rich white guy who led a failed business, and you've shown society society a criminal. None of the people who have told me my views on the Enron prosecution are "wrong" have ever been able to tell me what statutes Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted under. Forget about my critics being able to understand the theory of the case against Lay and Skilling. Facts and theories do not matter when a rich white man is on trial. More racism. Rich people, though, can be falsely imprisoned. It happened with Enron.
Tom Kirkendall has covered the Enron case from the beginning. He has been unrelenting, and he knows more about the Enron prosecution than anyone else in the country. I admire him.
Many people claim that the execution of an innocent citizen is one of the worst things the government can do. People are going ape-shit over Cameron Todd Willingham's case.
Where are the cries for Ken Lay? The government murdered Ken Lay. An old man, Ken Lay died of a heart attack - sustained after his conviction for a crime he did not commit. If Ken Lay had died of a heart attack while I attacked him, I'd have been prosecuted for murder. When the government drives a man to heart failure, not even the death-penalty abolitionists seem to notice. More racism.
Can we kill racism? Not until people realize that poor people often commit crimes because they are evil - whether "evil" is understood as a metaphysical property; or a sociopathic failure to empathize. Rich people do evil things, too. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson should be indicted for lying to Congress. Sometimes, though, the rich white guys are innocent.
Jeffrey Skilling's conviction should be reversed. Will it be?
