10/20/2006: 
Fraud & Conspiracy
Ken Lay:Guilty Of Nothing?!?
from the Houston Chronicle
The other night my housemate and I watched the documentary Enron:The Smartest Guys In The Room. As it began, he turned to me and said, "Hey, did you hear? The judge dismissed all the charges against Ken Lay!"
The ruling stems from a 2004 case citing the precedent that a defendant who dies while appealing their conviction cannot prove their innocence. While this sounds rational, it also means that the convictions have been in effect erased from the books. Ken Lay's criminal record is clean.
You may have noticed, dear readers, that the Fraud & Conspiracy header at the top of this article was designed with an Enron logo inside it, as we consider the case to be the essence of the term. Now it seems that the entire trial of Ken Lay was a fraud, a massive waste of taxpayer's money and time; if Jeffrey Skilling mysteriously dies in the near future and his conviction is overturned, will it be a conspiracy?
