Quote from LU Trader:
I didn't really want to post this because I might get yelled at and labelled mentally disabled or something of that sort, but I kinda felt I should say what I think...
First though, I should say that IF Lay and Skilling did intentionally defraud people out of billions and knew what they were doing was in fact illegal, then they do deserve the maximum punishment possible. However, I think there is something wrong with our justice system because there is a possiblilty they may not have known, and they were convicted even though SUPPOSEDLY you have to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt in order to convict.
I haven't been following the Enron story down to every detail, but from what I have read, a lot of the "structured financing" that Enron used to defraud investors was created by accountants from major investment/accounting firms. If you are a CEO who is not an expert in law or accounting, you might take the advice of your accountants without necessarily knowing whether their advice is within the rules or not. And supposedly, Lay and Skilling did consult their lawyers when employees brought up concerns, and the lawyers told them everything was legal. These guys may not have known that what they were doing was illegal. If you're not an expert in law, then you consult your lawyers - that's really the best you can do...and their lawyers told them that everything was fine - it is possible that they were duped or simply got bad advice and are now paying the price. I'm not saying that is what happened, but just that there's a possiblity.
But more importantly, what the jurors based their decisions on is a bit disturbing. First, there is no hard evidence that Lay and Skilling ordered any fraud. If you listen to reporting on the trial, various analysts say that the jurors have to weigh the prosecution witnesses' words against Lay and Skilling's. So the jurors aren't weighing EVIDENCE, but merely making a decision based on who they THINK is lying?? How many of the jurors do you think are experts in lie detection?
In an interview after the verdict, one juror said that one factor in judging Lay was that Lay seemed arrogant on the stand. This implies that if he had acted more humbly, it MAY have tipped the scales the other way. How Lay acts today could not possibly change whether his actions were right or wrong in the past, yet the way he acts today could change his verdict? So whatever his actions were in the past, he might have gotten a guilty verdict...but he could have possibly gotten the opposite.....if only he had put on a more agreeable show on the stand...!! Whatever happened to judging someone based on actual evidence and their actual actions?!
Maybe Lay and Skilling got what they deserve, I don't know. I guess they PROBABLY deserve it. Probably. The real tragedy is that our justice system will convict people based on some sort of opinion rather than hard evidence. To hell with proving things beyond reasonable doubt - "probably" seems to be good enough! Having said all this though, I believe if they are actually guilty, then they should rot in hell! If they have been wrongly convicted though, there's no DNA evidence to exonerate them.
