http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6101700808.html
Using a legal precedent that allows a dead person to have his conviction erased before the appeals are up,
a judge decided to revoke Ken Lay's conviction and allow Ken Lay's family to keep his assets. The rationale is that a dead person is unable to clear his own name. But that rationale is flawed. For starters, 99% of people who go through the system have a lawyer do the courtroom fighting. And without question, Ken Lay's family definately stood to benefit by having Ken Lay's name cleared. So its not like there was nobody there to fight for Ken Lay's name.

The second problem is the nature of the assets themselves. If someone steals a car, and then sells the car to an unsuspecting person, the police will find that car and return it to the rightful owner whether they catch the thief or not.

So the question here is,
If a person dies before his appeals is up, does he have the right to automatically have his conviction repealed?

If a person dies before his appeals is up, does he have the right to automatically have his conviction repealed?

Technically, Ken Lay was never formally convicted since he did not survive the sentencing portion of the hearing. In this case, they could have continued with the sentencing, but since the guy is dead:

a. it's pointless
b. he will have trouble garnering sympathy upon appeal (in other words, his ability to defend himself is compromised.

The civil case against Lay is going forward (as it should). That is the one where his estate will be penalized and some fat cat lawyer will make a king's ransom. The only impact this has is that there is no criminal conviction. By as we know from the OJ case, having a conviction isn't necessary to prove culpability and win a civil case (due to the lower burden of proof in civil cases).

If a person dies before his appeals is up, does he have the right to automatically have his conviction repealed?

Well, it would be pointless to convict a dead guy to life in prison. I can get on board about that, but what about the assets?

If the assets were to be confiscated and somehow distributed back to shareholders and/or former employees through the criminal side of things, that ought to be done. Or is it an all or nothing situation? Maybe the law works that way, I don't know.

Guess we just wait and see if any justice comes out of this Ken Lay story.

Don't think anyone, other than the family, will be happy about the family keeping Lay's loot.

One of the most crucial elements of the Common-law legal tradition and U.S. law in particular is the right for the accused to challenge their accusers. It is fundamentally critical, and is as important as the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," and until recently the right for anyone to challenge their detention (lousy 1000 year old traditions...)

As deplorable as it is that the man's name will not die in disgrace, the personal affronts of a particular legal outcome pale in comparison to the smooth functioning of the legal system on the whole.

In this case the situation is a bit more technically involved than the question provided suggests; Ken Lay was convicted but never sentenced, and no legal decision is "automatic." However, given the existing case law and particulars of this case, the judge no doubt ruled correctly.

If this appeal process was pointless, Ken Lay's family would have let Ken Lay's conviction stand. The reason why Ken Lay's family had the lawyers use a legal technicality to repeal Ken Lay's conviction was to make it harder for the Government to seize the stolen dollars that the Lay family was sitting on. This is another case where big money made the difference.

If a thief steals a car and the police find the car, the car automatically gets returned to its rightful owner. And that's always supposed to be the case, regardless of whether the thief gets caught, dies in the county jail or even gets a good lawyer. Now maybe its a little more complicated when you're dealing with money itself. But large sums of money involving millions of dollars usually have a paper trail, and so there should not be much trouble getting restitution paid to the Enron victims. Unfortunately this is going to take much longer than it should.

It is the civil proceedings that will determine if Lay's estate must pay restitution. He did not directly steal money from Enron investors. He misled them and personally profitted. It's more of a fraud case than an auto theft case. In a fraud case, you may never get the money you were defrauded out of back.

The civil case has a much lower burden of proof than the criminal case did. Of course, they would be proving a different point. Given that he was convicted criminally, I have little doubt he will also lose the civil case.