Sex, lies and audiotapes. This round of corporate trials is focusing on bad behavior and loose ethics -- and not just when it comes to corporate executives charged with crimes.
Key prosecution witnesses against them are being grilled about their alcohol and cocaine use, tax problems and sex lives in an attempt to undermine their credibility.
Former WorldCom Inc. finance chief Scott D. Sullivan is the prosecution's star witness against his onetime friend Bernard J. Ebbers, top.
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Defense lawyers whose clients once were among the nation's most powerful chief executives are trying to make their clients' chief accusers squirm.
Today, lawyers for former WorldCom Inc. chief executive Bernard J. Ebbers are to begin cross-examining Scott D. Sullivan, Ebbers's onetime friend and finance chief. Sullivan is the prosecution's star witness, testifying that Ebbers knew the telecommunications firm was committing fraud by hiding billions of dollars in operating expenses.
Ebbers's attorney, Reid H. Weingarten, declined to comment on his strategy, but in his opening argument he called Sullivan a liar. He also has won permission from U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones to quiz Sullivan about his alleged infidelity.
Attacking witnesses with damaging material from their personal lives is a common tactic in criminal trials. Whether the witness is a jailhouse snitch, a mafia turncoat or a police officer with a history of citizen complaints against him, many government witnesses come to the stand with hands that aren't entirely clean.
The risk that defense attorneys run in going negative in a white-collar criminal trial is that jurors may feel more of a twinge of sympathy for a clean-cut witness accused of such vices as a taste for drink or straying from a marriage.
Prosecutors in Manhattan tried to preempt attacks on Sullivan's character last week by asking Sullivan about his cocaine and marijuana use, drunken driving conviction, and a lie he told to obtain a government security clearance, apparently hoping that would help inoculate him from more aggressive questioning still to come from the defense.
Hundreds of miles to the south, in the corporate fraud case against HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard M. Scrushy, defense lawyers have been cross-examining William T. Owens, who worked alongside Scrushy for 17 years. Owens wore an FBI wire and recorded audiotape conversations with his former boss about a $2.7 billion accounting fraud. In two hours of questioning Friday, defense lawyer James W. Parkman III asked Owens about a "phony $1.2 million check" he had written the company to cover a previous loan and tried to portray him as arrogant and in control of the scheme.
In cross-examination this week, defense lawyers have hit on his own role in the conspiracy. They also have asked about allegations that Owens did not pay income taxes for several years and steps they say he took to split property and investment accounts with his wife before pleading guilty to a crime and agreeing to forfeit assets to the government.
