Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to review his insider-trading conviction, raising questions about the fairness of the judge who presided at his trial, according to an Associated Press story posted on Law.com.
Nacchio, convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading and acquitted on 23 separate counts, also asked the federal judge in Denver to reconsider his request to remain free on bail during appeal. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his convictions, but the court reinstated it last month.
“In several other circuits, the allegations against Nacchio would have been dismissed as a matter of law even in a civil case,” wrote Nacchio’s attorneys. “The proper standard is a matter of great national importance and merits review.”
The attorneys also argued that the trial judge, U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham, “openly displayed ethnic bias against the defendant and his counsel and recently resigned in disgrace in a lurid prostitution and obstruction of justice scandal.”
Nottingham once questioned in court why Nacchio, “the son of Italian immigrants … in New Jersey and New York, should ever have come out here to Colorado.”
Nottingham resigned last year after KUSA-TV in Denver, citing anonymous sources, reported allegations that he solicited prostitutes and asked one to lie about his being a client.