Pardon for Skilling?

Anyone remember the May 25, 2006 broadcast of the McLaughlin Group? That is where Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said:

I still think there are loopholes that various CEOs and creative accountants can work their way through. And you're now going to see Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling appeal, and those appeals can go on for quite a while, and then they can count on President Bush to try to commute their sentences ... Yeah, I think it would be hard for him to pardon. But I'm thinking there's some way to commute their sentence to time served or to lessen it. I don't see them spending decades or a decade behind bars.

Today, the Washington Post is reporting (here) on Skilling's appeal and the folks over at the White Collar Crime Blog are once again discussing the case. Co-editor Ellen Podger (a critic of the Scooter Libby commutation) once described Skilling's sentence as a "draconian" measure that was characterized by "worthlessness." Today, she says he is in prison for "committing an alleged crime that may not be a crime."

The Wall Street Journal summarizes the case as follows:

Skilling was convicted last year on 19 charges of fraud, conspiracy and insider trading in connection with Enron. He received a 24-year prison sentence, which he is currently serving in a federal prison in Waseca, Minn. In Dec. 2006, the Fifth Circuit, in denying his request for bail pending the appeal of his conviction, signaled that Skilling might serve something less than 24 years. The appeals court said that Skilling’s appeal was unlikely to result in the reversal of all 19 counts, but said that “our review has disclosed serious frailties in Skilling’s conviction” on 14 of those counts.

As indicated above, Skilling is in the 10th month of his 24-year sentence. His request for bail was actually denied by two separate courts and he has steadily maintained his innocence.

Points of reference? William S. Harlan, Frederic B. Ingram, Armand Hammer, Marc Rich, Charles R. Heike, Wilbur Foshay, Charles W. Morse ... among others.