Maybe Jeff Skilling has taken some lessons from fellow-fraudster Conrad Black who put up a motion asking for either a retrial or acquittal, claiming the prosecution had not proved its case.

Now the former Enron chief executive, who was sentenced to more than 24 years in the slammer for his role in the Enron fraud, is asking for a new trial. You can read his appeal, all 239 pages of it, here.

The arguments it puts up are quite extraordinary. Even more extraordinary when you consider that his lawyer Daniel Petrocelli and the crew at O'Melveny & Myers wrote it with a straight face:

"Profound, inherent weaknesses in the government's case-not just gaps in its evidentiary proof, but doubts about its basic theories of criminality-motivated the government to resort to novel and incorrect legal theories, demand truncated and unfair trial procedures, and use coercive and abusive tactics,'' the lawyers write.

According to his lawyers, Skilling has been sent to jail "not only for crimes that he did not commit, but for acts of business judgment that are not crimes at all."

But my favorite line is the one that says Skilling was victimized because Ken Lay died and there was no-one left.

"In sum, the government's zeal to bring a criminal case against Jeff Skilling, and prosecute and try him in Houston, Texas, required a process and produced a result that was flawed throughout, from the erroneous theory underlying the indictment through to his severely harsh sentence. That final error ultimately satisfied what many were demanding long before anyone knew what happened at Enron: no matter what the facts and whatever the law, someone would have to pay for Enron's failure. That someone was Jeff Skilling-the last man standing when the court meted out its punishment."

So there you have it! The man who was convicted of masterminding of what has become the most enduring symbol of corporate fraud and corruption did nothing wrong. He was simply "the last man standing". Oh right, it must have been the other Jeff Skilling at Enron who did it, says Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog.

And true to form, the houston chronicle's Loren Steffy pulls no punches in his blog:

"Don't be surprised if he gets some years shaved off the 24 he's now serving for the "Honest Jeff" routine. Mostly, though, it's the same through-the-looking-glass arguments the defense has made before. But this is what it all comes down to for the denizens of Planet Skilling. This is why Skilling mounted the most expensive criminal defense in history. By my calculations, it cost him a little over $220,000 a page. We'll see if it was worth it."

Indeed, this guy has no shame.