Disgraced press baron Conrad Black and Enron fraudster Jeffrey Skilling recently received fresh hope of an early release from jail following a US Supreme Court ruling that their convictions partly relied on a controversial corruption law that was too broad in its scope.
In a major legal victory for the two jailed tycoons, the Supreme Court issued separate but related rulings declaring that the men were treated unfairly when appeal court judges threw out attempts to have their convictions overturned.
However, the rulings only shed doubt on certain aspects of the men’s multiple convictions and stop well short of acquittal.
Black, currently an inmate at Florida’s Coleman prison, was sentenced in 2007 to six-and-a half years for defrauding shareholders in his Hollinger media empire out of US$6.1 million by attaching “non-compete” clauses to the sale of newspaper businesses that siphoned off funds from investors. The Canadian-born businessman has vigorously protested his innocence from the beginning.
Skilling, 56, is in a prison near Denver and serving a 24-year sentence. He was chief executive of Enron until shortly before the energy trading company imploded in one of the most dramatic corporate corruption scandals in US history.
In both cases, prosecutors used a law that allows for conviction if business leaders are found to have robbed investors of “honest services.”
Twin decisions written by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have now ruled that this law should only be applied to incidents of bribery and kickback schemes.
Referring to Black, the ruling concludes: “We vacate the judgment of the court of appeals and remand the case for further proceedings.”
The decision affects three counts of fraud for which Black was convicted by a Chicago jury. However, the 65-year-old still faces a hurdle in that he was also found guilty of obstructing justice by removing boxes of evidence from his Toronto office in defiance of a court order. Once friendly with society figures ranging from former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Black described the case against him as hanging “like a toilet seat” around the necks of prosecutors.
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