Skilling Appeal Filings Seek To Use Fastow Notes And Make Them Public

Kristen Hays’ Houston Chronicle story here discusses recent filings in the appeal of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling. At issue are the notes from the FBI interviews of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, which the defense contends will reveal exculpatory evidence. Skilling’s lead attorney Daniel Petrocelli describes the content of the notes as “a sledgehammer that destroys Fastow’s testimony.” The defense filings seek to use the notes in the appeal and make the contents public.

The article misleadingly states that Skilling’s attorneys were given summaries of Fastow’s interviews before the trial; a chron.com reader comment to the story notes: “Standard procedure has the prosecution giving the defense ’summaries’ know[n] as Form 302s, made by FBI agents from their raw notes. The Task Force DID NOT do this. Instead, they summarized the FBI forms into a ‘composite draft’, and they destroyed all previous drafts of their summary. BIG difference.”

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has scheduled arguments in the appeal for April 2 (earlier coverage here).