DENVER-
Fresh from a weekend off, jurors returned the federal courthouse Monday to resume deliberations for a third day in the $101 million insider trading trial of Joe Nacchio, the former head of Qwest Communications International Inc.
The eight men and four women, wearing small bright yellow buttons designating them as jurors, arrived before 9 a.m. to begin their work behind locked doors in a 10th-floor office suite that belongs to U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham.
At midday, a catered lunch was ushered into the offices. Although the jurors didn’t have any questions by mid-afternoon, prosecutor Cliff Stricklin waited a few floors down and a defense attorney also was to be close by just in case they were needed.
In the hallway outside Nottingham’s courtroom, nearly a dozen reporters waited for a verdict. Some read newspapers, books or magazines, while others talked on cell phones or worked on laptops, occasionally looking outside to watch clouds roll in over the skyscrapers.
Nacchio, 57, is charged with 42 counts of insider trading for a series of transactions during the first five months of 2001 based on inside knowledge that the Denver-based company was at financial risk and would be unable to meet financial targets. Each count carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Prosecutors pointed to a document that committed Nacchio to selling shares in early 2001 that they say was backdated from December 2000, when Nacchio received the financial warnings, to November 2000.
Defense attorneys have said Nacchio had to sell the stock under the terms of his employment contract and that he was optimistic about the company’s future. They also said Nacchio wanted to resign in early 2001 because of family problems.
Qwest Communications International Inc. is the primary telephone service provider in 14 Midwestern and Western states.
The Nacchio case was the most recent filed after the government investigated an accounting scandal at Qwest shortly after it acquired U S West, a primary telephone service provider in 14 mostly Western and midwestern states.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has said Qwest falsely reported fiber-optic capacity sales as recurring instead of one-time revenue between April 1999 and March 2002, which forced the company to restate $2.2 billion in revenue.
The SEC has a pending civil fraud lawsuit against Nacchio and other one-time executives at Qwest.
