By Jess Bravin (Wall Street Journal)

The Supreme Court eviscerated a favorite prosecution tool often used against corporate and public corruption, issuing a trio of unanimous decisions that dealt a blow to two of the landmark corporate cases of the last decade, the convictions of Enron Corp.’s Jeffrey Skilling and former media mogul Conrad Black.

Prosecutors pushed too far in using a federal law that makes it a crime to deprive others of one’s “honest services,” using it as a catch-all charge against allegedly corrupt behavior instead of sticking to the more precisely defined offenses of bribery and kickbacks, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court.

The law was also used in convicting former HealthSouth Chief Executive Richard Scrushy and ex-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

But according to Legal Schnauzer:

Honest-services fraud no longer is a factor in Siegelman’s case–at least for him personally. As we reported back in December, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals already has overturned the honest-services fraud convictions against Siegelman, so that no longer is a direct issue in his case. The counts that were upheld against Siegelman involved mainly bribery.