The list of Enron unindicted co-conspirators can be made public. Well, sort of.
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake originally accepted the list from the government under seal but defense attorneys asked that it be made public. One hundred and fourteen is an unusually long list of unindicted co-conspirators, a label which identifies people the government says helped commit the crime but who the government has so far decided not to charge in this case.
Since the Houston Chronicle revealed December 3 that the list had been filed under seal, lawyers for various ex-Enron executives have been trying to learn whether their clients are listed.
Lake ordered that the defense lawyers, who have the government’s list, may make public the names of people who have already been convicted and people who have already been disclosed as co-conspirators in publically-filed documents in Enron prosecutions.
[…]
Lake also ordered that the defense lawyers could not publicly reveal any one of the 114 who has not been convicted or named in public documents as conspirators.
The judge did say that if there is a co-conspirator on the list who has been told by the government that they are a target or has entered into an agreement with the government, then defense attorney can tell those people individually that they are on the list.
But otherwise, some on the list cannot even be informed that they are on the list.
“Nothing in this order prohibits either the defendants from seeking to speak to individuals on the list . . . or individuals from refusing to speak to the defendants,” Lake wrote.
I wonder if we’ll ever find out who they all are. Tom has some more on this from when the list first came to light.
I was a defendant in a Federal Court trial and was ordered that I could speak to NOBODY about my trial. I could not talk to people about preparing for my defense, I was not allowed to talk to my family members, etc.
Is this legal?