In a stunning blow to the government's crusade against business malfeasance, the jury has rendered a not guilty verdict in the first major trial under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Tom Kirkendall has the details and excellent analysis. Money quote:
... the Scrushy case will stand for the dubious nature of the government's policy of criminalizing merely questionable business practices. As much as the government protests that true business crimes are deterred by such vigorous prosecution of questionable business conduct, the fact of the matter is that any reasonable interpretation of justice is strained in squaring the result in the Scrushy case with the results in the Martha Stewart case, the sad case of Jamie Olis, the case of Dan Bayly, the case of William Fuhs, the DOJ's handling of the Global Crossing case, and many others. As Professor Ribstein has noted:
So white collar prosecutions become a sort of lottery. If the prosecution can come up with something colorful, it wins, or maybe loses if it’s too colorful (Sardinia). These are not the elements of a rational criminal justice system.
