Lea Fastow's Withdrawn Plea

Regular readers will recall that we have been folllowing the misadventures of Andrew Fastow, former CFO at Enron, and his wife Lea. Andrew had agreed to coperate with the feds investigating Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, provided his wife got a deal on her tax fraud charges so that they wouldn't be in prison at the same time (they have young kids and don;t want those kids to go through having both parents away at the same time). With Federal district court Judge David Hittner having indicated that he would give Lea Fastow a sentence well in excess of that agreed to by the Fastows and the prosecution, Lea has withdrawn her plea and may end up going to trial. This development prompted Steve Sturm to write:

Am I missing something, with the judge in the Lea Fastow case screwing up the plea agreement? The prosecutors and the defense team agreed on a prison term for her, as part of a plea agreement with her husband, that will require him to cooperate with the prosecutors, and the judge goes and throws a wrench into the whole thing - all because he wants her to serve an additional 5 months in prison? Talk about activist judges! Whether she serves 5 months or 10 months IS NOT A BIG DEAL! Heck, in order to get her husband to plead guilty and offer up evidence against Skilling and Lay, I would have been willing to see her get
probation! Five months in prison? Icing on the cake. Accepting the plea deal is NOT a miscarriage of justice, nor does it signify the judge's acceptance of any abuse of prosecutorial discretion - because there isn't any! When the deal was announced months ago, there was no public outcry, nor were any Congressmen calling for an investigation of the prosecutors. Even without the tie-in to her husband's plea agreement, the 5 month difference is insignificant and the judge ought to get smacked upside his head (administratively, that is) for sticking his head into where it wasn't needed. To require us to bear the costs of a trial in the hope of getting another five months in jail out of the lady shows a total lack of perspective. To jeopardize Andrew Fastow's cooperation over this five month issue is even more ridiculous and the judge, in my opinion, just qualified himself for the 'Stupid Jurist of the Year' award.

Harsh, but true. It strikes me as the a bit of judicial grandstanding. I do have a theory about why it happened though. Congress has been beating up on judges for departing from the sentencing guidelines. Which has made lots of judges very angry. Under the guidelines, if Lea Fastow is convicted she probably would get a sentence of around 21 months. Maybe the judge is trying to make a point that sticking to the guidelines the way Congress wants can mess up other things Congress wants (here an Enron case). Or maybe I've been reading too many conspiracy theories lately.