Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted on 19 counts of insider trading and acquitted on 23 other counts by a jury in Denver, Colorado.  According to a report from the Rocky Mountain News (here), the acquittals came on the counts during the earlier part of the five-month period charged in the indictment, and the convictions were for the later transactions, totaling $52 million in sales.  Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in effect for 2001, that amount of gain would result in a sentence of 57-71 months, but it could increase if the district court were to add any enhancements for abuse of a position of trust or more than minimal planning, which could take the range up to 8-10 years.  Of course, the Sentencing Guidelines are no longer mandatory, but judges frequently use them as the starting point for the determination of an appropriate sentence, and they give a good idea of the general range for a likely prison sentence. 

In light of the defense’s decision to go with a scaled-down presentation and not deal with the whole "national security" information that was only available to Nacchio, a natural question will be whether the defense was over-confident that the government had not established its case.  Of course, the decision not to call Nacchio to testify will be second-guessed, but it is always difficult to say whether that would have made a difference, and if he had come across poorly, he could well have been convicted on all 42 counts and even faced an obstuction of justice enhancement to the sentence. (ph)