Trial, Week 2: Focusing on appeals

As the trial of former Enron execs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling picks up again today (everyone gets a three-day weekend, of sorts), jurors are no doubt be dreaming of in-court hilarity, the Chronicle staff is patting itself on the back again and again for being noticed by The New York Times and teams of appellate lawyers will be thinking of ways to send the whole horrific escapade to appeal.

Stanley Schneider, one of the best-known Houston criminal appellate lawyers, said the most effective criminal trial lawyers here have bookish, law-loving appellate specialists sitting by their side.

"When you are in the middle of trying cases you don't think about the record, you think about the 'not guilty.' Focusing on those two words means you might not see what the appeals court needs if you lose," Schneider said.

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"You need to plan ahead. You do it best by bringing in the kind of people who read cases all the time," said Schneider, noting these more academically inclined counselors can be very different than the gregarious, rough-and-tumble trial attorneys who like to put on a show for a jury.

The prosecutors in the Lay/Skilling trial have two appellate specialists. Lay has one, George "Mac" Secrest; Skilling hasn't designated an appellate lawyer, but mey be working with two. Though Skilling's lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, said the defendants "don't expect to have to try this case again," he went on to note that "we're in a world where anything can happen." And depending on the way the trial goes, anything may.