Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin took their chances in court--and their bet paid off. They were acquitted. The verdict cannot be taken lightly as they ponder whether to bring charges against others or not. A jury found both men innocent even though there were plenty of emails that the prosecution used as evidence of stark wrong-doing.

Apparently, the jurors accepted the alternate view that the context in which the emails were sent was very important, thus the case was not about "black and white" lies. Unfortunately for prosecutors pondering other Wall Street cases, most of their evidence boils down to these sorts of emails.

You have to conclude the verdict makes it much less likely that we'll see charges brought against big-name officials at the likes of Lehman Brothers; there was a day when people assumed the likes of Dick Fuld would be indicted. You could lump wiretaps in with this type of evidence. This may embolden the many implicated in the Raj Rajaratnam trial to fight the charges. All in all, it's hard not to conclude that this first high-profile case to be brought against Wall Street executives may be the last. 

For more:
- here's a New York Times article

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