Federal prosecutors yesterday urged a judge in Houston to keep the fraud trial of three former Enron Corp. executives in the energy trader's hometown, citing a recent verdict to back up their argument that local juries do not behave in a "knee jerk" fashion.
The Justice Department's Enron Task Force said former chairman Kenneth L. Lay, former chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling and former accounting chief Richard A. Causey did not meet a heavy burden to transfer the case out of Houston. The prosecutors contend that a move would pose a hardship for scores of local witnesses.
Government lawyers pointed to a Houston jury's acquittal last month of former Enron accountant Sheila K. Kahanek as evidence that area residents would not deliver "knee-jerk or uniform guilty verdicts tending to reflect vengeance, a personal stake in the outcome, or pressure from a community desiring justice from those enmeshed in the Enron scandal." The jury convicted several of Kahanek's fellow defendants.
Lay, Skilling and Causey are charged with conspiring to inflate Enron's earnings and conceal billions of dollars in debt before the company plummeted into bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Each has pleaded not guilty. U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III has yet to schedule a trial date in the case, which has come to symbolize an entire era of corporate malfeasance.
Last month, Daniel M. Petrocelli, the lead trial counsel for Skilling, petitioned the judge to move the trial to Phoenix, Denver or Atlanta. Lawyers for Causey and Lay joined in the request, saying negative publicity and widespread damage to Houston's economy caused by Enron's fall could prevent jurors from hearing the case impartially.
But government lawyers yesterday said that almost 90 percent of respondents in a phone survey failed to mention Skilling by name when asked about Enron executives who broke the law and that 70 percent "could not summon even a single negative word" about Skilling. Prosecutors hired an expert at Dimitrius and Associates LLC, which worked on behalf of O.J. Simpson in his criminal trial, to analyze the data.
Legal experts said efforts to transfer cases to a different city rarely succeed. In recent years, judges have moved violence-saturated cases involving the Oklahoma City bombing and the Washington area sniper attacks.
Three separate Houston judges have rejected defense attempts to move other criminal cases with Enron ties outside of Houston. U.S. District Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore ruled last week that the trial of several former executives in Enron's Internet division would proceed in the city. Gilmore said potential jurors for the April trial will fill out detailed forms asking for information about financial losses and family ties to help root out lingering bias against the company or its former leaders.
Defense lawyers did not return calls for comment yesterday.
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