US High court sides with ex-Enron chief

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court has sided with former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling in limiting the use of a federal fraud law that has been a favourite of white-collar crime prosecutors.

The court in this ruling also sided with former newspaper magnate Conrad Black, setting aside a federal appeals court decision that had upheld Black's honest services fraud conviction. But as in Skilling's case, the justices left the ultimate resolution of the case to the appeals court.

The court said today that the "honest services" law could not be used in convicting Skilling for his role in the 200 collapse of the energy company Enron that cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars. But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion that the ruling does not necessarily require Skilling's conviction to be overturned.

During arguments in December and March, several justices seemed inclined to limit prosecutors' use of this law, which critics have said is vague and has been used to make a crime out of mistakes and minor transgressions in the business and political world.

The court, at the same time, rejected Skilling's claim that he did not get a fair trial in Houston because of harshly critical publicity that surrounded the case in Enron's hometown.

Today's ruling could affect the current prosecution of former Illinois Gov Rod Blagojevich.

The government argues that both Skilling's and Black's convictions should be sustained, even with the court's ruling today.

Lawyers for the two men say that the entire case against them should be thrown out.