Houston – After 54 witnesses in more than three months, testimony ended Monday in the federal fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay and former chief executive Jeff Skilling.
The two defendants appeared upbeat shortly after the jury was released for the rest of the week.
“We feel real good about where we are right now,” the 64-year-old Lay said outside the Houston federal courthouse. “We think, in fact, in the end we’re going to prevail.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Skilling, 52, told reporters.
The eight-woman, four-man jury will return next Monday to hear closing arguments over three days before deliberating the outcome of the premier criminal case to emerge from one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history.
Both defendants testified as part of a 29-witness defense lineup. The government called 22 witnesses in its case, which rested March 28 – including eight ex-Enron executives who have pleaded guilty to crimes – and three more rebuttal witnesses Monday.
After the defense teams rested their cases midmorning, the government offered witnesses in rapid succession to reinforce prosecutors’ contention that Lay and Skilling committed crimes at the company before it spiraled into bankruptcy proceedings in December 2001.
Skilling lawyer Daniel Petrocelli said outside court that while the defense teams had eliminated some witnesses – as the government had before them – the defendants are confident that jurors would enter deliberations with an open mind and that they were ready for “vigorous debate and discussion.”
“We do think the jury has heard enough to make a decision,” Petrocelli said.
Lay’s lead lawyer, Michael Ramsey, returned to court Monday after being absent for about a month while having two stents implanted in arteries to relieve blockages.
“I’ve got a few pipes that have been blown out, but they’ve been patched,” Ramsey said, noting that he will help present the Lay team’s closing argument. “We’re glad this case is over with. It’s time to get to the jury.”
One of the government’s rebuttal witnesses testified that Lay has lied before when under pressure.
“Under certain business exigencies, I have known Mr. Lay not to tell the truth,” said former Enron oil and gas executive Mike Muckleroy, who worked for Lay before and after Enron was founded in 1985.
Muckleroy was referring to financial problems created by top oil traders in the so-called Enron oil scandal in 1987. But he couldn’t provide that context to jurors because U.S. District Judge Sim Lake prohibited prosecutors from addressing the issue in the trial. Lay was never charged with wrongdoing in the scandal.
However, Muckleroy, whose actions in 1987 helped Enron avert financial crisis, told jurors Monday that he was fired in 1992 or 1993 because he wasn’t a “team player.”
“I’d been very unhappy with the direction that Mr. Lay had set for the company and some of the people he had hired, including the other defendant, Mr. Skilling,” Muckleroy said.
Lay insisted during testimony that he was telling the truth when praising Enron’s strength to employees and investors in the fall of 2001, just months before it filed for bankruptcy protection.
But he admitted during cross-examination that he hadn’t investigated a slew of written warnings from employees about Enron’s accounting integrity.
