account cantants and lawyers. you have to put limits on the greed that drives a whole lot of people. kenneth lay and jeffrey skilling were once the most celebrated business leaders of america. tonight, they are convicted felons. enron was the first domino. it was followed by worldcon, tyco, one accounting fraud after another. and on and on. this belief that giant corporations are going to be restrained from running amok was revealed in this decade, to be a fairy story we tell ourselves at night so we can sleep better. no executive is too prominent or powerful. and no scheme to defraud is too complex or too fancy to avoid the long arm of the law. still nervous about finding a new apartment?
general of alabama. he asked me to join his staff at this time, but i declined to join his staff. however, he made me a special assistant attorney general and he put me in charge of handling defense cases for the state of alabama. also during this time period, jeff became charged with violating the state of alabama ethics act. it involved a company by the name of tyco. jeff sessions could have hired any lawyer he wanted to, to represent him in that matter. jeff decided to hire me in that particular case. we had that case and during the course of it, it was probably the longest hearing that had ever been held before the state ethics commission. at that point, jeff was fully exonerated of all the charges involving the state ethics act. one of the things that i can say about jeff is that he has always been the same person that i have
after i left the u.s. attorney s office, jeff became the attorney general of alabama. he asked me to join his staff at that time, but i declined to join his staff. however, he made me a special assistant attorney general, and he put me in charge of handling defense cases for the state of alabama. also during this time period, jeff became charnled with violating the state of alabama s ethics act. it involved a company by the name of tyco. jeff sessions could have hired any lawyer he wanted to to represent him in that matter. jeff decided to hire me in that particular case. we had that case, and during the course of it, it was probably the longest hearing that had ever been held before the state ethics commission. at that point jeff was fully exonerated of all the charges involved in the state ethics t act.
during his confirmation hearings. in court he was accused of prosecutorial misconduct. 1996. sessions office indiets an alabama supply company. at the time attorney general sessions called the case a significant investigation. in a scathing opinion, circuit judge james garrett threw the entire case out and ripped apart the attorney general s office in the process. the judge finding that even having been given every benefit of every doubt, the misconduct of the attorney general in this case far surpasses in both extensiveness and measure the totality of any prosecutorial misconduct ever previously presented to or witnessed by this court. the case against tyco was presented as theft. in a bizarre arrangement, the attorney general s investigation was fueled by money and information from that same
client, who was getting ready to sue tyco itself. the judge s order says the misconduct by the attorney general s office included refusals and failures to produce exculpatory evidence, evidence that there was no theft. the judge found a flagrant disregard of the constitutional rights of those accused, what he called completely incredible and deceptive testimony of so many witnesses and concludes that the patterns of prosecutorial misconduct was either intentional in deliberate misconduct or so reckless and improper as to equate to conscious disregard for the lawful duties of the attorney general. sessions was already a u.s. senator by the time the judge threw out the case and the new attorney general dropped the case. after tyco s attorney complained the ethics commission