The Supreme Court reversed Andersen's (aka Arthur Andersen) obstruction of justice conviction (the opinion should be available soon here), agreeing with Andersen that the jury should have been instructed that it needed to find that Andersen acted with the knowledge that it would be obstructing an investigation by ordering the shredding of documents before receiving a subpoena from the SEC.
Of course, little good that the result does for Andersen (except perhaps in defending itself from various civil lawsuits, since those suits won't be able to use the criminal conviction anymore against the accounting/auditing firm); after the indictment, Andersen largely dissolved, with only a skeleton staff left behind to manage the lawsuits. I think most of the rainmaking partners left for the remaining big 4 accounting firms.
So the end result is that lots of lower level employees lost their jobs because of a prosecution that was deemed aggressive at the time and that ultimately turns out to have been invalid based on the way the case was presented.
How does that vindicate Anderson? Over turning the conviction because the jury was given the wrong instructions does not mean that the defendant would not have been convicted if the proper instructions *were* given--it just means that we want to make sure that the jury framed their decision correctly to prevent _possible_ injustice. Yes, this decision was absolutely correct, but I don't see how it 'vindicates' Anderson. The only thing that would vindicate Anderson in my mind is an out-right acquittal.
Posted by: Dave! | June 01, 2005 at 05:15 PM
How does that vindicate Anderson?
My bad. I meant "vindicate" more narrowly, in the sense that Andersen's legal argument as to how the statute should be interpret, was validated, and not the broader issue of Andersen's conduct.
Posted by: Tung Yin | June 01, 2005 at 05:24 PM