NEW YORK – News of the death Wednesday of former Enron chief Kenneth Lay added another turn in the story of the company’s collapse.

Lay, 64, was convicted in May of fraud and conspiracy for his role in Enron’s collapse. He faced sentencing this fall, fully aware that he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

His co-defendant, Jeffrey Skilling, was convicted of 19 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the same jury and is awaiting sentencing.

Skilling declined to comment when reached by telephone at his Houston home by The Associated Press.

A spokeswoman for Lay’s family said she would release further details later.

In federal criminal cases, appeals aren’t filed until after sentencing. Legal experts had said Lay would have faced an uphill battle to get his conviction overturned on appeal.

“I think everybody who was in that courtroom is reeling right now,” said author Bethany McLean on the business news channel CNBC.

McLean is a writer for Fortune magazine, and the author, with Peter Elkind, of “Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which handled the prosecution of Lay and Skilling through its Enron Task Force, declined to comment Wednesday. White House spokesman Tony Snow also declined to comment on Lay’s death.

“The lesson isn’t that we were too rough on him, the lesson is that there are severe consequences for this kind of behavior,” said Maryanne Jennings, a lawyer and professor of business and ethics at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business. “I think it was just so overwhelming for him.”

Others said those who had suffered financially in Enron’s collapse will have to be satisfied with a guilty verdict.

“People who have been victimized by his criminal conduct at least had the knowledge that his actions were adjudged to be guilty before he died,” said Geoffrey Corn, assistant professor of law at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “It’s a chapter people really want to put behind them. I think they know they never will be made whole.”

“It’s one of those crimes where the frustration was when the people at the top seem to come out of it with their financial house pretty much in order,” Corn added, “but the average victim lost a job or is still struggling to overcome the fact that on their resume they have to put Enron.”

Hugh Johnson, chairman of Johnson Illington Advisors, said Lay’s death might help close a chapter on Enron’s effect on the financial markets.



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