A former Credit Suisse broker has taken Eastern District Judge Jack B. Weinstein’s advice and forsaken the one favorable aspect of a ruling he received from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Eric Butler, who had been convicted of committing a $1 billion securities fraud, had persuaded the circuit to dismiss the underlying securities fraud count on venue grounds. His convictions on two conspiracy counts were upheld.
Through a letter from his lawyers Monday, Mr. Butler waived venue in the Southern District in response to Judge Weinstein’s comments in a June 17 opinion that his win in the circuit was “a Pyrrhic victory at best, or a disaster at worst.” In the ruling, issued two days after the circuit’s decision, Judge Weinstein advised Mr. Butler that he would likely resentence him to the same five-year term he had initially. Whether there were two or three counts before him, he noted, he was likely to impose concurrent five-year terms. On the other hand, he warned that if convicted in the Southern District on the substantive count Mr. Bulter could face a “longer,” possibly “consecutive” sentence.
