A presumption of prejudice attends only the extreme case. See also App. v. Juror 99 wrote that she had not heard or read about the Enron cases and did not “know anything about” Enron. By the end of the day, the court had qualified 38 prospective jurors, a number sufficient, allowing for peremptory challenges, to empanel 12 jurors and 4 alternates. The demands for skills has sky-rocketed, as technology becomes an increasingly key part of all industries.

Holding that honest-services fraud does not encompass conduct more wide-ranging than the paradigmatic cases of bribes and kickbacks, we resist the Government’s less constrained construction absent Congress’ clear instruction otherwise. He also asserted that he could be fair and require the government to prove its case, that he did not believe everything he read in the paper, that he did not ‘get into the details’ of the Enron coverage, that he did not watch television, and that Enron was ‘old news.’ ” 554 F. 3d, at 563–564. Skilling served 12 years in prison following his conviction on 19 counts in Enron’s epic 2001 collapse. Careful voir dire can often ensure the selection of impartial jurors even where pretrial media coverage has generated much hostile community sentiment. In prior vagueness cases, we have resisted the temptation to make all things right with the stroke of our pen. “[T]he several thousand adjudications of the Civil Service Commission,” the employees maintained, were “an impenetrable jungle”—“undiscoverable, inconsistent, [and] incapable of yielding any meaningful rules to govern present or future conduct.” 413 U. S., at 571. Skilling steadily rose through the corporation’s ranks, serving as president and chief operating officer, and then, beginning in February 2001, as chief executive officer. In addition to upholding honest-services prosecutions, courts also increasingly approved use of the mail-fraud statute to attack corruption that deprived victims of other kinds of intangible rights, including election fraud and privacy violations. 1. In December 2005, three weeks before the trial date, one of Skilling’s co-defendants, Richard Causey, pleaded guilty. [Footnote 42] Indeed, the McNally case itself, which spurred Congress to enact §1346, presented a paradigmatic kickback fact pattern. See id., at 352–353. [Footnote 21], As noted, supra, at 4–6, and n. 4, the District Court initially screened venire members by eliciting their responses to a comprehensive questionnaire drafted in large part by Skilling.

On appeal, Skilling raised two arguments relevant here.

First in contrast to the small-town settings at issue in prior cases, Houston is the fourth most populous city in the nation, the suggestion that 12 impartial jurors could not be found there is hard to sustain. Brief for Petitioner 38–39. But the pre-McNally Court of Appeals opinions were not limited to fraud by public officials. began in January 2006. He was accused of being a parole violator. United States v. Runnels, 833 F. 2d 1183, 1187 (CA6 1987); see Brief for United States 42, and n. 4 (citing dozens of examples). e.g. In parsing the various pre-McNally decisions, the Court acknowledges that Skilling’s vagueness challenge has force, for honest-services decisions were not models of clarity or consistency. Ibid. 554 F. 3d 529, affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. “[T]he jury was entitled to convict Skilling,” the court stated, “on these elements”: “(1) a material breach of a fiduciary duty … (2) that results in a detriment to the employer,” including one occasioned by an employee’s decision to “withhold material information, i.e., information that he had reason to believe would lead a reasonable employer to change its conduct.” Id., at 547. The court then asked whether anyone had “any reservations about your ability to conscientiously and fairly follow these very important rules.” App. The court also denied Skilling’s request for attorney-led voir dire on the ground that potential jurors were more forthcoming with judges than with lawyers. The court also asked about questionnaire answers that suggested bias, focusing mainly on whether, notwithstanding seemingly partial comments, the prospective jurors believed they “could be fair” and “put the government to its proof.” Id., at 852a. Blachly v. United States, 380 F. 2d 665 (CA5 1967), loftily declared that “[l]aw puts its imprimatur on the accepted moral standards and condemns conduct which fails to match the ‘reflection of moral uprightness, of fundamental honesty, fair play and right dealing in the general and business life of members of society.’ ” Id., at 671 (quoting Gregory v. United States, 253 F. 2d 104, 109 (CA5 1958)).

terminology. The sudden collapse of Enron directly affected thousands of people in the Houston area and shocked the entire community. Although the widespread community impact necessitated careful identification and inspection of prospective jurors’ connections to Enron, the extensive screening questionnaire and follow-up voir dire were well suited to that task.

The Fifth Circuit appeared to prejudge this issue, noting that, “if any of the three objects of Skilling’s conspiracy offers a legally insufficient theory,” it “must set aside his conviction.” 554 F. 3d, at 543. The actual deception that is practised is in the continued representation of the employee to the employer that he is honest and loyal to the employer’s interests.” United States v. Procter & Gamble Co., 47 F. Supp. Uniformly, however, they have declined to throw out the statute as irremediably vague. See, e.g., Juror 29 (Skilling is “[n]ot an honest man”); Juror 104 (Skilling “knows more than he’s admitting”); Juror 211 (“I believe he was involved in wrong doings”); Juror 219 (“So many people lost their life savings because of the dishonesty of some members of the executive team”; Skilling was “[t]oo aggressive w[ith] accounting”); Juror 234 (“With his level of control and power, hard to believe that he was unaware and not responsible in some way”); Juror 240 (Skilling “[s]eems to be very much involved in criminal goings on”); Juror 255 (“[T]housands of people were taken advantage of by executives at Enron”; Skilling is “arrogant”; “Skilling was Andrew Fastow’s immediate superior. Moreover, the District Court gave Skilling’s counsel relatively free rein to ask venire members about their responses on the questionnaire.

Under our relevant precedents, the more intense the public’s antipathy toward a defendant, the more careful a court must be to prevent that sentiment from tainting the jury.