AGA Today
The Formation Of Enron Jurors' Opinions Is Under Scrutiny
By
Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 21, 2006; Page D01
HOUSTON, Feb. 20
-- Everybody, it seems, has an opinion about Enron Corp.
But the one that
counts will be reached by 12 people who will decide the fate of the
energy trader's former leaders.
The jurors are an
eclectic bunch: eight women and four men, three self-identified
Hispanics and one Asian. It is a well-educated panel that includes an
engineer, a courtroom manager, and employees of oil industry giants
Royal Dutch Shell Group and Schlumberger Ltd.
Four alternates are
standing by in case one of the regular jurors becomes ill or otherwise
cannot continue through the trial of former chairman Kenneth L. Lay and
former chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, which is likely to extend at
least four months.
The way the Enron
panel goes about its work will fuel a long-running debate about the
ability of average citizens to assess responsibility for complex
business frauds -- and will carry powerful implications for the way
prosecutors bring future white-collar cases, according to experts on
corporate crime.
"Juries can understand
lies, cheating and stealing," said Ellen S. Podgor, a visiting law
professor at Stetson University and co-author of a blog on white-collar
cases. "What they can't understand is complex accounting practices. You
have to simplify it for the jury."
That is exactly where
the prosecution has focused its efforts. "It is not about accounting. It
is about lies and choices," Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Hueston told
the jurors in opening arguments.
In contrast, defense
lawyers have attempted to lead the jury down circuitous paths of
accounting treatment, introducing audio and video clips full of arcane
detail about complex business issues.
Defense lawyers also
have signaled that they may make the jury itself the basis of appeals if
the trial goes against their clients. Almost from the start, they raised
questions about whether jurors from Houston, where thousands of workers
lost jobs and retirement savings in Enron's collapse, could hear the
case with open minds.
Daniel M. Petrocelli,
lead lawyer for Skilling, and Michael Ramsey, chief attorney for Lay,
repeatedly tried to get the case moved out of town. They recently asked
the judge to preserve completed jury questionnaires, signaling the
process of selecting the jury is an issue they are likely to revisit on
appeal.
Several of the 12
jurors and four alternates expressed clear opinions and more than
passing familiarity with Enron, according to a transcript of the jury
selection process. Their identities have not been released under the
order of U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III.
Still, the transcript
offers clues about the history and sometimes negative impressions that
jurors have brought to the courtroom.
One juror called
former Enron executive and likely government witness Sherron Watkins
"brave" for writing an anonymous memo raising questions about the
company's accounting practices. During jury selection, she told the
judge she was surprised that Lay and Skilling faced trial together.
"I'm a little confused
that you're trying them together," she said. "I mean, one could be
innocent, and one could be guilty. I don't know that they're in this
together. I don't get that feeling at all."
Another panel member
called the defendants "suspect" in his questionnaire, the transcript
said. About Lay, who maintains that for most of his tenure he handled
high-level political and diplomatic relations rather than financial
details, the juror wrote, "If he did not know what was going on in his
company, he was really a poor manager or leader."
A finance worker who
reported being laid off four or five times in recent years expressed
similar thoughts. "I feel like, if a person is responsible for a
company, they should know what's going on with them."
He also expressed
anger over the job loss at Enron and blamed the company's demise for the
2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, corporate responsibility legislation that
resulted in a heavier workload for the juror.
The engineer, who has
taken copious notes so far in the trial, said of many corporate
executives in pretrial questioning: "They're trying to meet the bottom
line. . . . I think they're stretching the legal lines on it."
Defense lawyers
challenged the fairness of that prospective juror outside his earshot,
but the judge rebuffed them after the juror said he could be fair.
A female juror
reported during the selection process that she had interacted with Lay's
sister Sharon, who showed up in the spectator gallery after the trial
began. Another young female juror attends Second Baptist Church, whose
pastor appears on a list of character witnesses for Lay. Lay also is a
member of her parents' country club, she said.
In her questionnaire,
she wrote of the defendants, "I think they probably knew they were
breaking the law."
Other panelists
include an Indian man who came to the United States in 1990, a woman
whose husband had been an official with the Houston Police Department,
and another woman who told the judge that her law firm had to write off
"a substantial amount" of unpaid fees when Enron went bust.
So far, to the delight
of the efficiency-minded judge, jurors have arrived on time and sharply
dressed, signaling they are taking their job professionally. For
Valentine's Day last week, the women wore bright red shirts or jackets
and the men donned red ties in a show of esprit de corps in what
experienced lawyers say could be a negative early sign for the defense.
"One of the things
that a defense lawyer does not like is cohesiveness among the jury,"
said David Berg, a Houston attorney and author of "The Trial Lawyer:
What It Takes to Win."
"What you want is
independent thought," he said.
© 2006 The
Washington Post Company
