HOUSTON — After a four-year federal investigation and a 3 1/2 -month trial, the landmark fraud and conspiracy case against former Enron Corp. leaders Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling is in the hands of a South Texas jury.
The panel of eight women and four men, whose occupations include dairy farmer, dental hygienist, teacher and court clerk, began deliberations Wednesday afternoon after a final appeal from prosecutor Sean M. Berkowitz, head of the Justice Department's Enron Task Force.
At the end of a trial that featured thousands of documents and more than 50 witnesses, Berkowitz sought to convince the jury that the government's case was at heart a simple one. He dramatized the point by presenting the prosecution's final chart: a large poster with the words "Truth" and "Lies" rendered in vivid black and white.
"We have presented overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy at Enron to cook the books and present the company as something it wasn't," Berkowitz said. Referring to Lay and Skilling, he said, "I'm asking you to send them a message that it's not all right. You can't buy justice; you have to earn it."
The jury spent the afternoon behind closed doors before leaving the courthouse for the day without reaching a verdict. They are scheduled to resume deliberations today.
The collapse of Enron in late 2001 was the most prominent of a series of corporate scandals involving names such as WorldCom Inc., Tyco International Ltd., Adelphia Communications Corp. and Global Crossing Ltd.
Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, top the list of U.S. executives who were criminally charged in the slew of investigations that followed. They face decades in prison if convicted on all charges -- six counts of conspiracy and fraud against Lay and 28 counts of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading against Skilling.
Over 2 1/2 days of final arguments this week, the defense and the government presented radically different interpretations of the Enron debacle.
Lawyers for Skilling and Lay argued Tuesday that beyond the secret and relatively small-scale thievery of former Chief Financial Officer Andrew S. Fastow and several of his lieutenants, there was no crime at Enron. Moreover, they said, the company was healthy within weeks of its demise. It crumbled only because of a "crisis of confidence" brought on by negative news stories and the machinations of short sellers trying to profit from a plunge in Enron stock, they said.
