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Monday, May 29, 2006
Courts - "Enron Case A Grueling Trial for Its Lawyers"
"Enron Case A Grueling Trial for Its Lawyers: With No Key Evidence, Skill Was at a Premium" is the headline to a front-page story today in the Washington Post. Here is a snippet from the lengthy story:
The trial, the capstone of the government's efforts to hold corporate executives accountable for fraud that occurred while they were in charge, required both sides to be at the top of their games. In a case that featured no smoking-gun documents or "gotcha" moments, the skill of the advocates on both sides took on special importance, said experts who followed the trial.The single-minded pursuit of Lay and Skilling ended in success for the Justice Department's Enron Task Force. But the four-year drive was not without conflicts over strategy and personal style for lawyers on both sides of the monumental effort, one of the most complicated corporate cases in history.
The government team stayed on course largely under the guidance of task force director and Chicago prosecutor Sean M. Berkowitz, a marathon runner who turned 39 two days after the verdict. Colleagues call Berkowitz unflappable, and he behaved true to form, even when government projection specialists stumbled and failed to find documents quickly as he cross-examined Skilling. Berkowitz parceled out key witnesses to members of his team without considering his own ego.
He was the man who also made peace among squabbling colleagues and delivered the final -- and, according to jurors, the convincing -- rebuttal argument in a smooth baritone, snapping his fingers for emphasis. Paraphrasing a line from the Jack Nicholson character in the film "A Few Good Men," Berkowitz told the jury that Lay and Skilling resorted to falsehoods because "Enron couldn't handle the truth."
Berkowitz, who pokes fun at his bald spot and rides motorcycles in his spare time, overrode the occasional interpersonal conflicts over resources and speaking roles among the team of nine lawyers, 15 agents, five paralegals and six others. He pushed -- despite opposing views -- to strike a plea deal only weeks before the trial with former Enron accounting chief Richard A. Causey. That helped slash more than a half-dozen witnesses from the case and also deprived Skilling and Lay of a scapegoat to blame if things started to go sour.
The government victory was by no means a sure bet. Skilling's lead defender, Daniel M. Petrocelli, an entertainment lawyer from Century City, Calif., appearing in his first criminal trial, outtalked everyone else on his side of the courtroom, including highly touted and far more experienced advocates hired by Lay, according to lawyers who watched the trial. Petrocelli, 52, emerged as a clear leader of Skilling's defense as he marshaled help from more than a dozen junior lawyers, three law partners and a team of paralegals and support staff, including Skilling's wife Rebecca Carter, his younger brother Mark and his longtime assistant Sherri Sera. A separate unit of three document specialists set up an aluminum table bearing laptop computers directly outside the courtroom and often raced in with papers and opposition research to help the lawyers in the middle of the action.
Surprisingly to Houston's legal community and trial watchers who had mostly underestimated him, Petrocelli's command of the facts equaled his theatrical style, as he rattled off arcane measurements of financial risk and accounting rules without glancing at notes. He left the eight-women, four-men jury smiling -- and left a series of government witnesses withering under his strong-armed attack. Juror Doug Baggett said that during much of the case, he felt like a "Ping-Pong ball," as his opinions vacillated back and forth after incisive questions by the defense team.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 29, 2006 09:17 AM
Posted to Courts in general