United States v. Causey

356 F. Supp. 2d 681, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2547, 2005 WL 407713
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedFebruary 2, 2005
DocketCRIM.H-04-025
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 356 F. Supp. 2d 681 (United States v. Causey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Causey, 356 F. Supp. 2d 681, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2547, 2005 WL 407713 (S.D. Tex. 2005).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

LAKE, District Judge.

Pending before the court are Jeffrey Skilling’s Motion for the Identification and Production of Brady 1 and Rule 16 Materials (Docket Entry No. 164), Jeffrey Skill-ing’s Motion for the Identification and Production of Brady, Rule 16, and Jencks Act Materials in the Possession of Cooperating State and Federal Agencies, the Enron Bankruptcy Examiners, and Other Cooperating Investigators (Docket Entry No. 176), Defendant Richard A. Causey’s Motion for the Identification and Production of Brady Materials (Docket Entry No. 181), and Kenneth L. Lay’s Motion for the Production of Material Favorable to the Accused (Docket Entry No. 237). For the following reasons the motions will be denied.

I. Introduction

The defendants in this action are charged in a 53-count Second Superseding Indictment (SSI) (Docket Entry No. 97)— either jointly or individually — with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, insider trading, money laundering, and. making false statements to banks. The offenses charged in the SSI arise from an alleged scheme to deceive the investing public, including Enron’s shareholders, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), and others

*683 about the true performance of Enron’s businesses by: (a) manipulating Enron’s publicly reported financial results; and (b) making public statements and representations about Enron’s financial performance and results that were false and misleading in that they did not fairly and accurately reflect Enron’s actual financial condition and performance, and they omitted to disclose facts necessary to make those statements and representations fair and accurate.

(SSI ¶ 5)

A. Defendants

The SSI alleges that the defendants served in various executive positions at Enron, i.e., that Lay served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of the Board of Directors from Enron’s formation in 1986 until February of 2001 when he stepped down as CEO and continued as Chairman; that Skilling served as President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) from January of 1997 until February of 2001, and served as President and CEO from February of 2001 until August of 2001 when he resigned; and that Causey served in various positions from 1992 until 1998 when he became Enron’s Chief Accounting Officer (CAO). (SSI ¶¶ 6-8)

B. Factual Basis for the Charges Alleged in the SSI

The SSI enumerates eight “Devices Employed in Furtherance of the Scheme” involving multiple transactions or manipulations, including inter alia, (1) using a partnership called LJM Cayman, L.P., to create special purpose entities (SPEs) to engage in a series of transactions known as Raptor I, Raptor II, Raptor III, and Raptor IV (known together as the Raptors), Cuiaba, Nigerian Barges, Coyote Springs II, and Global Galactic (SSI ¶¶ 29-43); (2) manipulating the value of assets such as Mariner Energy and the Elektro power plant (SSI ¶¶44 and 80); (3) circumventing accounting standards for the sale of assets in the Hawaii 125-0 transaction (SSI ¶¶ 45 — 46); (4) concealing the failures of Enron Energy Services (EES; SSI ¶¶ 47-48); (5) manufacturing earnings and concealing the failures of Enron Broadband Services (EBS) through manipulations known as Project Grayhawk, Project Braveheart, Backbone Trust, sale of “dark fiber,” and a video-on-demand venture with Blockbuster (SSI ¶¶ 49-53); (6) manipulating reported earnings by reserving profits from energy trading on an internal ledger known as Schedule C (SSI ¶¶ 54-57); (7) circumventing accounting standards for valuing good will associated with Wessex Water Services (SSI ¶¶ 58-60), and (8) making false and misleading representations to the investing public, the SEC, rating agencies, and Enron employees based on these deceptive devices, transactions, and/or manipulations (SSI ¶¶ 61-85).

C.Pending Motions

Asserting that the government’s open-file policy requires them to review over 80 million pages of documents, defendants argue that the government has violated the discovery requirements of Rule 16 and Brady by burying them in paper, demanding a rushed trial date, and withholding obviously exculpatory materials. 2 Defendants seek “both a general order making clear that the Task Force’s discovery practices to date have been deficient, and a specific order requiring the production of several categories of Rule 16 and Brady material.” 3

The government responds that it

*684 has produced the equivalent of “open file” discovery, affording defendants access to practically all materials in the government’s possession. In light of the number of documents in this case, as well as the government’s desire for a reasonable trial date, the government has also taken additional steps beyond the mandates of Rule 16 and Brady, including: producing and supplementing a set of hot documents; providing indi-ces of numerous document productions; affording defendants access to the government’s electronic database; and agreeing to identify for defendants any exculpatory information within the meaning of Brady that it locates. 4

The government asserts that it has provided defendants

a rolling production of hot documents since the time of indictment. These hot documents — culled from the larger discovery materials — represent a rough cut of what the government believes is the central evidence for both the government and the defense. 5

The government argues that its production of hot documents is responsive to defendants’ requests for material subject to both Rule 16 and Brady, and that defendants’ assertion that its open-file policy requires defendants to review over 80 million pages of documents is contradicted by the transcript from the August 11, 2004, status conference where defense counsel told the court that

out of what we estimate to be somewhere between 50 and 80 million documents that are [included] ... in the IB Index we’ve honed ... down [the documents that we intend to review] to about 5 to 7 million, key Arthur Andersen documents, key Vinson & Elkins documents^ and] ... key Enron documents [that] were turned over to the government, about 500 boxes. 6

Asserting that neither the government’s open-file policy nor its production of hot documents satisfies its discovery duties, defendants seek an order directing the government to identify all state and federal agencies, investigators, or other entities or persons with which the Enron Task Force (ETF) has had, or currently has, a cooperating, investigatory relationship; 7

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Related

In re State ex rel. Skurka
512 S.W.3d 444 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2016)
Boyd v. United States
908 A.2d 39 (District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 2006)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
356 F. Supp. 2d 681, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2547, 2005 WL 407713, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-causey-txsd-2005.