Thursday, June 30, 2005

SCRUSHY ACQUITTED!

Pretty amazing news: "A federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., stunned observers Tuesday when it acquitted Richard Scrushy, the former HealthSouth CEO, of all criminal charges stemming from a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at the company he founded. And so the executive whose imperial lifestyle and dictatorial workplace demeanor once earned him the nickname King Richard has been spared the life prison sentence that has threatened him since his ouster from HealthSouth and subsequent indictment two years ago".

This is fabulous news. Federal prosecutions like this are a travesty of justice -- with plea bargains being used as straight-out subornation of witnesses. Who wouldn't testify the way the government wanted with the alternative being a long prison sentence? Fortunately, the jury saw it that way too. This article from last February tells in detail how unjust is the Federal prosecution system that Scrushy had to beat. With the acquittal of Arthur Anderson and Scrushy and the recent defeat of Spitzer in New York, business might be heartened to fight the government standover men in future instead of giving hundreds of millions of shareholders' money to parasites who have done nothing to create those assets.

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