Former Enron CFA Andrew Fastow, sentenced to six years for his part in the Enron scandal, got some bad news this week. Although the judge recommended he serve his sentence in Bastrop, TX, which has both a low security prison and a minimum security prison camp, the Bureau of Prisons designated him to Oakdale, a low security facility in Louisiana.

In other words, no Club Fed near home for Fastow.

Fastow and his wife had interesting deals. Because Fastow cooperated with the Government, he not only got a reduced sentence, but got to stay out of jail while his wife, Lea Fastow, served her year sentence, so their young children would not be without both parents at the same time.

Six young men were accused of gang-rape and faced life in prison, if charged. But for a videotape, that showed the female accuser "orchestrating" the sex, it might have happened.

A Dana Point woman was told today she must serve at least 90 days in jail for falsely accusing six men of kidnapping and raping her at gunpoint. [Tamara] Moonier went to Fullerton police in June 2004 and reported that she had been kidnapped outside a bar by six men and taken to an unknown location and raped.

But one of the men videotaped the sexual encounter, and the tape contradicted Moonier's story, said Deputy District Attorney Paul Chrisopoulos. The videotape showed that instead of being a victim, Moonier was actually the instigator of much of the sexual activity, Chrisopoulos said.

Voter turnout in North Carolina was low, a product of having no Senate race this year. Turnout was higher in District 11, where voters elected Heath Shuler to replace Republican Rep. Charles Taylor.

Turnout was also high in Durham County, where District Attorney Mike Nifong won reelection, despite his questionable (at best) handling of the Duke rape allegations. Nifong's challengers, Lewis Cheeks and Steve Monks (a write-in candidate), drew 39 percent and 12 percent of the vote, respectively, giving Nifong a plurality of the total votes.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas, hoping to compete against the Catholic church in the Rio Grande Valley, provided three pastors with $1.3 million in seed money to establish Baptist churches. The pastors claimed they set up 258 churches, but the Convention can only find five to ten.

It found that some monthly new church reports, which were used to obtain funding, were fabricated. In some cases, the money was used to enhance other mission projects unrelated to the new churches; in other cases, where the money eventually went remains unknown.

Complaints from parishoners and an FBI probe failed to motivate the Convention to conduct an earlier investigation. Even after the investigation, no disciplinary action has been taken against the pastors who received the money.

Last week we wrote about two border agents sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively for shooting a pot smuggler and an ensuing cover-up at the border.

In an unrelated case today, a federal judge sentenced two veteran border patrol agents to six years each for bribery in an immigrant smuggling scam.

Mario Alvarez and Samuel McClaren released smugglers and their customers from jail while working on a prisoner transfer program with the Mexican government. They once released a prisoner in a Wal-Mart parking lot for a fee of $6,000, according to court documents.

The agents, based in El Centro, once smuggled two illegal immigrants across the border themselves in a government vehicle and released them for cash, according to court documents. They turned over the location of surveillance cameras and other Border Patrol intelligence to smugglers.

Total amount of the bribes received by the agents: $180,000.00. According to the Justice Department:

The Justice Department quietly abandoned its felony prosecution of former FBI agent Denise Woo, who had been accused of helping espionage suspect Jeffrey Wang. Wang has never been charged, but Woo -- who believed Wang to be innocent -- was accused of "disclosing the existence of a national security wiretap on Wang's home telephone, revealing to Wang the identity of the FBI's confidential informant and lying to FBI agents."

Those charges, carrying a ten year mandatory minimum, were dismissed when Woo agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of revealing confidential information. She was fined $1,000 and placed on probation -- quite a light sentence for an agent who (according to the government) was assisting a spy.

Woo's attorney, Carolyn Kubota, explains why Woo was prosecuted in the first place: "Denise was made a scapegoat for the government's absolutely bungled investigation of Mr. Wang." Wang suggests that the FBI retaliated against Woo for arguing that the investigation of Wang was unwarranted.

Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong faces re-election next week. The rape charges against the three former Duke lacrosse players continues to unravel. Nifong says neither he nor members of his staff have interviewed the accuser yet and Kim Roberts, the second dancer, told Good Morning America on Monday yet another version of events that evening:

... Roberts said she told the woman, "Get out of my car, get out of my car."

"I push on her leg. I kind of push on her arm," Roberts said. "And clear as a bell, it's the only thing I heard clear as a bell out of her was, she said -- she pretty much had her head down, but she said plain as day -- 'Go ahead put marks on me. That's what I want, go ahead.' ''

Roberts said the comments "chilled me to the bone, and I decided right then and there to go to the authorities."

Yet, Nifong tells the Associated Press he stands by his decision to prosecute. The only thing he's sorry about is having talked too much to the media. Then why is he talking to them again now?

Right, there's an election next week.

You can comment here, or over at the TalkLeft Duke forums.

For what its worth, an annual ranking of the relative safety of 371 American cities lists St. Louis as the most dangerous (followed by Detroit and Flint) while designating Brick, NJ as the safest. The rankings are based on an assessment of FBI crime statistics.

Bump and Update: It's 24 years for Skilling who went down fighting, proclaiming his innocence to the court. His guidelines were 24 to 30 years.

In a Houston courtroom today, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling will learn his fate.

With the untimely death of his co-defendant, former Enron CEO Ken Lay, Skilling now stands alone atop the smoldering ruins of a company that once claimed revenues of $111 billion and was named "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.

I expect Skilling will get a hefty sentence, but I don't buy the theory that it will be heavier because Lay's death leaves him the only one to be held accountable. I think the Judge will give Skilling the same number of years in prison he would have imposed if he were sentencing both Skilling and Lay today.

Last year while patrolling the border, two border agents, Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of pot. The driver, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, fled across the border and both agents fired. One of the bullets hit Aldrete-Davila in the behind.

Federal prosecutors convinced a jury in March that the agents had shot a defenseless man and schemed to cover it up. Much of the evidence against them came from the drug runner, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who reported the shooting to a friend at the Border Patrol in Arizona. Aldrete-Davila was given immunity from prosecution by the U.S. attorney's office.

Yesterday, the agents were were sentenced to federal prison terms of 11 years and 12 years.

The Minutemen decried the sentence. Why?

Having failed to convince three successive juries of John "Junior" Gotti's guilt (as TalkLeft reported here, here, and here), the government is finally admitting defeat. In a Friday news dump, embarrassed federal prosecutors announced that they won't pursue a fourth trial.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reports tonight that the closely watched Long Island case of the DWI death of 7 year old wedding flower girl Katie Flynn prosecuted as second degree murder for "depraved indifference" for the accused driving on the wrong side of the road at three times the legal limit resulted in a guilty verdict after a five week trial.

Martin R. Heidgen, of Valley Stream, NY, was found guilty on Tuesday after five days of deliberation, with the jurors having twice reported being deadlocked. Jurors wept as the verdict was read.

The case became a cause celebre for the D.A.'s election and advocates of stronger DWI prosecutors.  It "is one of only a few murder convictions won in fatal drunken driving cases anywhere."