Legal News

Nacchio, Reaching for Another Lifeline, Heads Back to the Tenth Circuit

By Ashby Jones

Joe Nacchio has been ordered to report to federal prison next Tuesday, April 14. His journey down the river is nearing an end — and the sound of the waterfall has turned from a murmur to a roar. Still, in a filing made on Wednesday, he and his lawyer, Latham & Watkins’s Maureen Mahoney, have made it clear they’ve got two more vines to try to grab hold of before he drops. (If you’re incredibly confused at this point, click here, here and here for earlier posts on Nacchio and the introduction of our waterfall metaphor.)

In the filing made on Wednesday, Mahoney renewed a request with the Tenth Circuit to allow her client to remain free Supreme Court decides whether to review his illegal insider trading conviction. Click here for the Denver Post article; here for the filing itself.

“The district court’s determination that there is no substantial question is not entitled to any weight,” wrote Mahoney, adding that Krieger’s view that Nacchio may have filed his Supreme Court petition to delay his sentence “is necessarily intertwined with her mistaken view of the merits and rested on a misunderstanding of the undisputed facts.”

Mahoney requests for Nacchio to be kept out of prison until one week after the Supreme Court rules against them, provided that happens.

The Tenth Circuit represents one shot for the duo; Mahoney made clear on Wednesday that if the appeal is denied, she’ll appeal straight to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, the justice who presdies over such stay motions made from the Tenth Circuit.

Law Blog ’80s Pop-Music Video Clip of the Day: All this talk of waterfalls made us want to want to hear this song, one of the better tunes from one of the better albums of the 1980s. Take it away you Madchester laddies!

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 09, 2009 (boomark / email).