The first Stanford-related prosecution to reach trial--a tangential case alleging that two former employees of Stanford Financial Group illegally shredded thousands of company documents to obstruct an SEC investigation into the alleged scheme--has resulted in acquittals of both men. The case had been sent to the jury for a verdict, but when jurors sent out a pair of notes indicating confusion about the case, U.S. District Judge Richard W. Goldberg decided to rule in the case on his own, the Houston Chronicle reports.

The defendants in the case were Thomas Raffanello, Stanford Financial Group's ex-security chief, and technology officer Bruce Perraud. After previously labeling the prosecution's case as "thin," the judge ruled that with respect to the element of intent, "the evidence is substantially lacking." Prosecutors alleged that after a court had ordered that all Stanford records be preserved, Raffanello directed the shredding to go forward. Raffanello's attorneys argued that all of the documents were duplicated on company computers, and had been made available to the SEC and other investigators, the Chronicle reports.

Prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that said the court's preservation order did not permit such shredding, and that "the SEC could not rely on Raffanello's assurances that all his office's work was stored on a computer server."

By the way, this is the same case about which I noted here that some poor soul had been given the challenging task of actually “re-assembl[ing] the contents of three bags of shredded documents” that were sought as evidence in the case.