Another Peculiar Death....

by **HMKGrey** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 3:48 pm

From AP Wire: Former Houston U.S. attorney dead at 47 KRISTEN HAYS Associated Press HOUSTON - Former Houston U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby, who resigned as a prosecutor to go into private practice about a year ago, has died. He was 47. Shelby died Tuesday of cancer, said Don DeGabrielle, his successor as Houston's chief federal prosecutor. When asked about Shelby's death, Harris County Sheriff's Lt. John R. Martin said deputies were called to a house in the same block where Shelby lived where a person had shot himself. Martin declined to release the name of that person or any of the details about the suicide. Shelby's body was taken to the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office for an autopsy, which was to be performed Wednesday. "I've known him for 20 years. There's not a finer or more zealous advocate. He is one of the most effective orators I've ever heard. He loved his family completely, and he had passion in everything he did," DeGabrielle said. Shelby, a married father of two, was a career prosecutor, first in Harris County and then the U.S. Attorney's office in Houston. He earned a bachelor's degree at Texas A&M University and then a law degree in 1984 from the University of Texas School of Law. He resigned from his federal post in June last year to become a partner and lead the white-collar criminal defense practice at Fulbright & Jaworski, a Houston-based international law firm. "He was immediately a star within our firm," said Steve Dillard, head of Fulbright's litigation department. "He was in demand from the time he set foot here. He opened up opportunities for building out his practice and was a major contributor despite the relatively short time he was here." Shelby joined Houston's U.S. Attorney's office in 1989 and specialized in cases involving public corruption, organized crime and environmental law. In 1997 he moved to Phoenix, Ariz., where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney until he was sworn in as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas in December 2001. He was appointed by President Bush to be in charge of the seventh largest district in the country, including Houston, Corpus Christi, Laredo, McAllen, Brownsville and Victoria. The same month he was sworn in, Houston-based Enron Corp. crumbled into bankruptcy proceedings amid a scandal of hidden debt, inflated profits and accounting tricks. Shelby recused himself from the Justice Department's Enron investigation because he had relatives who were company employees and shareholders. But Bush selected him in 2002 as one of seven U.S. attorneys appointed to the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force, and Shelby and his staff pursued other corporate crime prosecutions in the aftermath of Enron's crash. His staff probed an Enron-like deal at Dynegy Inc. that led to a former finance executive's 2003 conviction by a jury and a 24-year prison sentence. Shelby also led a lengthy federal investigation into errant trading practices by energy traders at various companies in Houston, including El Paso Corp., Dynegy and Reliant Energy. The first of two trials this year that emerged from those trading investigations began last week. Shelby was also a Naval intelligence officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, where he held the rank of commander. His active military duty included service in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and more recently in Bosnia. Shelby said last year that he resigned from his federal job to join Fulbright so he could better support his family and pay for his two daughters' college educations. His survivors include those daughters, aged 13 and 17, and his wife, Diana. Funeral services were pending. ================================= I was going to hilight all the interesting pieces of this one but is it just me or is ALL of it interesting?

Another Peculiar Death....

Another Peculiar Death....

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