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Yesterday it was the defense's turn to make its final arguments in the Enron trial — and in six hours of often loud speechifying, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling's lawyers reasserted their claim that the two former Enron executives had nothing to do with the company's collapse.
[Lay lawyer Bruce Collins] warned jurors not to think that because Enron went bankrupt that there had to be massive fraud. He said the two are not the same."The company failed, but it did not fail because of a fraud," Collins said.
"There was a run on the bank. Enron was different than other companies and it depended on confidence," which was lost when [former CFO Andy] Fastow's thefts became public, he explained.
Defense lawyers accused the prosecution of attempting to "tap into prejudice and sympathy" in its case, also charging that government witnesses were highly coached before their testimony (as opposed to defense witnesses, who Houstonist is sure walked straight into the courthouse and spoke openly and candidly about whatever popped into their heads). Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling's lawyer, said the government "robbed [its witnesses] of their free will" by forcing them to plead guilty to save their families and their fortunes. Petrocelli pointed out that some prosecution witnesses' stories had changed since their initial testimony to grand juries, investigators and the FBI, apparently forgetting that the same was true of Skilling.
Lay's lawyers — four spoke on his behalf yesterday — asked jurors not to send the former Enron chairman to jail, saying any misinformation Lay might have passed on to others came from his subordinates. (As we've seen, the "I really don't know anything about what happens in my company" argument seems to be popular among people in charge of major corporations.) Collins also said Lay did the right thing when he investigated what was going wrong at Enron, which we assume was a reference to the Vinson & Elkins probe Lay ordered after receiving the whistleblower memo from Sherron Watkins. As you'll recall, V&E partner Max Hendrick III did a pretty good job of making that investigation look like a whitewash when he testified for the defense.
Things did get heated at times on Tuesday. One such moment came when Lay lawyer Chip Lewis yelled at prosecutor John Hueston, saying Hueston had asked Lay a question that left the wrong impression with the jury. "Don't come to Houston, Texas, and lie to us," Lewis shouted at Hueston, which promped applause from Skilling and a couple of people sitting with Lay's family — as the Chronicle notes, "a highly unusual sound in a federal courtroom."
Today, prosecutor Sean Berkowitz will wrap up the government's case with two hours of arguments, after which the case will be sent to the jury.
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