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United States v. Wittig

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Before MURPHY, McKAY, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

David Wittig and Douglas Lake continue to labor under an indictment for allegedly looting their former company, Westar Energy, Inc. Their first trial ended in a hung jury. A second trial yielded convictions, but we reversed those convictions on appeal. With respect to the substantive counts of wire fraud and money laundering, we held that the government had failed to produce sufficient evidence (actually, any evidence) of an essential element. We therefore ordered the defendants acquitted of those offenses. The government’s error on the substantive wire fraud counts, we found, also implicated the adequacy of the instructions given the jury on the remaining charges against the defendants: circumvention of internal controls and conspiracy. Accordingly, we reversed the defendants’ convictions on those counts as well, but because the basis of our reversal had nothing to do with the sufficiency of the evidence, we remanded the case for a possible retrial.

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