Nacchio’s “Remorse” Option to Reduce His Sentence

One effort at a downward adjustment Nacchio is apparently not trying to make is the one based upon “Acceptance of Responsibility” or commonly referred to as “remorse." If Nacchio had shown “remorse,” the resulting two base levels decrease would have reduced his range under the federal sentencing guidelines from 70-87 months to 57-71 months. However, the decrease for remorse is very limited--it appears that Nacchio would not qualify even if he expresses remorse now as shown by the following comment to the “Acceptance of Responsibility” provision under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines:

"This adjustment is not intended to apply to a defendant who puts the government to its burden of proof at trial by denying the essential factual elements of guilt, is convicted, and only then admits guilt and expresses remorse.”

Since Nacchio put the government to its burden of proof at his trial relating to the essential factual elements of insider trading, Nacchio’s attempt to express remorse now would be too late. Regardless, Nacchio probably could not bring himself to accept responsibility because of his belief that he did nothing wrong (especially if Nacchio believes in his own infallibility). His legal counsel will press on appeal that Nacchio was effectively prevented at his trial to present evidence of positive nonpublic information (future secret government contracts) that would have offset the adverse material nonpublic information he might have possessed at the time of selling his Qwest stock.

Comments

[Matthew]

I know Joseph Nacchio. For you to make a statement about his being convinced of his own "infallibility" is at best irresponsible journalism.

He doesn't believe he is guilty because he honestly does not know what he did wrong or what information he supposedly had to trade on.

The jurors by their own admission used the wrong standard to convict and actually said they just figured he must have known something.

Where is the evidence and the so called smoking gun.

[Kevin O'Brien]

It was reported in the news media that one juror said that the government proved their case by the preponderance of the evidence. This statement was unfortunate since this is the lessor standard of proof applicable to civil cases, not criminal cases where the burden of proof for the government is "beyond a reasonable doubt"--a standard much higher than the civil standard of proof. Most likely, the juror misspoke when quoting the standard.

On the use of the word "infallibility," I was conjecturing whether Nacchio might be afflicted with hubris as so many executives caught in scandal seem to be afflicted.