Sunday, August 27, 2006

After Death, Lay Gets Off

This is wrong on so many levels it is uncountable...
 

A legal precedent could clear Ken Lay, the firm's late founder, making it hard for the US to tap his estate.

| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
If someone is convicted of a crime and dies before exhausting all his appeals, is he innocent?

That's the question now challenging federal prosecutors in the latest twist of the Enron case. A legal precedent could clear the record of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, even though he was found guilty of six counts of conspiracy and fraud, because of his sudden death last month. The move could also make tens of millions of dollars in his estate off-limits to creditors. . .

. . The Justice Department has said it will use all available legal means to reclaim the money related to the criminal charges Mr. Lay was convicted of in May. But those means may be few because of the legal precedent set by the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found in 2004 that a person's criminal record is "abated," or wiped out, if he or she dies before having a chance to exhaust all appeals.

The rationale is that someone convicted of a crime should not be denied the right to have the trial's fairness tested, says Brian Wice, a Houston attorney. In this case, it means Lay's conviction, trial, even his indictment will most likely be abated - making him an innocent man.

The lawyer handling Lay's estate has already filed a motion with US District Judge Sim Lake, asking him to erase Lay's criminal record, based on the ruling by the Fifth Circuit, which governors federal courts in Texas. . ."

So will suicide become a growth industry with white collar criminals?

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