High court rules for ex-Enron exec

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Supreme Court overturned a ruling that a former executive of Enron Broadband Services, the failed telecommunications business of Enron Corp., could be retried.

By a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled Thursday for F. Scott Yeager, a former senior vice president of business development. He said U.S. Justice Department prosecutors were barred from bringing him to trial a second time after a jury found him not guilty on some charges.

His attorneys had cited the U.S. Constitution's double-jeopardy provision that bars defendants from being tried twice for the same crime.

After a lengthy trial in 2005 in Houston, Yeager was acquitted on conspiracy, securities fraud and other fraud charges while the jury failed to reach a verdict on insider trading and money laundering charges. Yeager then was charged again with some of the same insider trading and money laundering offenses.

His attorneys argued that when the jury acquitted him on those charges, it determined an essential element of the other offenses and the case must be dismissed. They said the jury found he did not use material nonpublic information in his sales of shares of Enron, a once high-flying energy company that collapsed in 2001 over an accounting scandal.

The Supreme Court reversed a U.S. appeals court ruling that allowed a retrial.

The high court's decision also is expected to affect two other former Enron Broadband executives, Joseph Hirko and Rex Shelby, who have raised the same issue.

Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said an apparent inconsistency between a jury's verdict of acquittal on some counts and its failure to return a verdict on other counts does not affect the acquittals' preclusive force under the double-jeopardy provision.