SKILLING v. UNITED STATES ( No. 08-1394 ) Decided June 24, 2010 - Syllabus: "Founded in 1985, Enron Corporation grew from its headquarters in Houston, Texas, into the seventh highest-revenue-grossing company in America. Petitioner Jeffrey Skilling, a longtime Enron officer, was Enron’s chief executive officer from February until August 2001, when he resigned. Less than four months later, Enron crashed into bankruptcy, and its stock plummeted in value. After an investigation uncovered an elaborate conspiracy to prop up Enron’s stock prices by overstating the company’s financial well-being, the Government prosecuted dozens of Enron employees who participated in the scheme. In time, the Government worked its way up the chain of command, indicting Skilling and two other top Enron executives. These three defendants, the indictment charged, engaged in a scheme to deceive investors about Enron’s true financial performance by manipulating its publicly reported financial results and making false and misleading statements. Count 1 of the indictment charged Skilling with, inter alia, conspiracy to commit “honest-services” wire fraud, 18 U. S. C. §§371, by depriving Enron and its shareholders of the intangible right of his honest services..."
“Honest services” law pared down - Three cases, three rulings; Opinions recapped
"For nearly a quarter of a century, federal prosecutors pursuing corruption cases — involving public officials and those in private life — have had a broadly worded criminal law available, and they have used it both creatively and expansively. On Thursday, the Supreme Court, while refusing to strike down the law under the Constitution, pared it down to what the majority called its “solid core”: the law may be used only to prosecute bribery or kickbacks. The Court suggested that Congress may want to try to expand the law’s reach, but warned the lawmakers to approach that prospect with constitutional hesitation..."
"Almost from the day Congress enacted the law specifying that fraud can be committed by denying someone the ‘intangible right” to one’s “honest services,” lower courts have struggled to define just what kind of wrongdoing would fit within that concept. Perhaps to illustrate just how uncertain the meaning of the law is, the Justices themselves could not agree on Thursday on how to read the string of lower court decisions that have interpreted the law; six Justices thought the pattern of those rulings was quite clear and definite, but three other Justices said the rulings were a hodgepodge.
"The three Justices who read those rulings as varying widely would have struck down the law as unconstitutionally vague. But the other six Justices proceeded on the premise that the Court’s duty was “to construe, not condemn, Congress’ enactments.” And the construction those Justices put on the law was that it criminalizes “bribes and kickbacks — and nothing more...”
