Q&A: Skilling's Lawyer on the Appeal

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Is the fact that Fastow ended up getting a much shorter sentence because of his cooperation grounds for Skilling's appeal?

Fastow and the government told the jury Fastow's spending not a day less than 10 years in prison. The prosecutor made a big point of that to bolster Fastow's credibility. He told the jury he wouldn't lie. He's locked in for 10 years. Of course, a couple months later he gets a six-year sentence and will serve less than four. In terms of the appeal, one of the significant issues is that we were denied information about how people like Fastow cut their deals with the government.

The idea that someone cooperates isn't ground for an appeal. That happens all the time. But here we had no meaningful access to not only the cooperators, but any witnesses. The government had a stranglehold on the witnesses. Nobody would talk to us out of fear—they were afraid to get in harm's way with the government. We repeatedly asked the court for relief, but couldn't get anywhere. You cannot get a fair trial when the government has a monopoly on the evidence.

Can you talk about the O.J. case and how you think it relates to Skilling's trial?

The two O.J. cases were the most publicized cases perhaps of all time. My view is that, in the criminal case, the wrong outcome was as much a part of people not doing their job as anything else. With that camera in the courtroom beaming that trial across the world, the focus on what happened on the night of June 12 was lost. It became a debate about race relations and police conduct. You're litigating whether Mark Fuhrman, a cop, uttered a racial epithet in the last 10 years. That is not where the focus should be in a double murder trial where the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming.