The spectacular financial collapse of Enron Corp. happened quickly. The selection of a jury Monday in the criminal trial of its two former top executives, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, was even speedier.
It took only a day to impanel the 12-person jury, while in some other high-profile cases, such proceedings have dragged on for weeks.
The quick process was due to the tight control by federal Judge Sim Lake and actually began late last year, when he sent questionnaires to 400 potential jurors, asking them their opinions of Enron and Messrs. Skilling and Lay. Based on the answers, Judge Lake and the lawyers eliminated 300 people. The remaining 100 were summoned to court, where the judge gave the lawyers just 40 minutes to submit challenges to dismiss objectionable candidates. He picked 12 jurors and four alternates from the remainder. Judge Lake did almost all the questioning; the attorneys spoke little, other than to introduce themselves.
Some lawyers uninvolved in the case were dismayed. "There is absolutely no way a jury can be picked fairly in that case in one day," said Jeffrey Lichtman, a New York criminal defense lawyer. Yet many jury reform advocates have long argued that is how jury selection should work. Legal experts said yesterday that while defendants have a constitutional right to a fair jury, they aren't entitled to one that took days to pick.
There has been a trend in recent years toward abbreviating jury selection. The process tends to take less time in federal courts than in state courts because judges there often limit attorneys' ability to question jury candidates, known as voir dire. Recently, more state judges have been following the federal model.
The practice of issuing questionnaires is also increasingly common, especially in high-profile trials, where there is a fear that widespread publicity may have tainted the jury pool. The one used in the Enron case was more detailed than the ones most judges use, even at the federal level -- it included questions specific to Enron as opposed to general queries about an individual's background.
Prosecutors and defendants alike often spend heavily on jury consultants, particularly in high-profile cases, and they still play a key role even in abbreviated selections. They go through questionnaires looking for clues for jurors that will help their side or flag jurors that they want struck.
Some jury consultants say judges should avoid putting too much stock in questionnaires. "Some jurors will inevitably answer one way in a questionnaire but then equivocate when you pose the question to them live, in court," says Joshua Dubin, a New York jury consultant who advised Irv and Chris Lorenzo, the founders of record label Murder Inc., who were acquitted last year of federal money-laundering charges. He notes that New York federal judge Edward Korman, who presided over the Lorenzo trial, spent two full days picking a jury, even after distributing pre-trial questionnaires.
Many defense lawyers and some prosecutors say they favor a more deliberate process that allows them to ask potential jurors more detailed questions to weed out biases. "There is no substitute for allowing an attorney to look a juror in the eye and ask whether they can be fair and honest," said Michael Schachter, a special counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York and a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who prosecuted Ms. Stewart and former ImClone Systems chief executive Sam Waksal.
Mr. Lichtman points to an acquittal he won last year for John A. Gotti, the son of the notorious mob boss, who had been charged with securities fraud. Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin of New York sent out pretrial questionnaires and then spent three days in court, narrowing the jury pool from 122 to 40 people, Mr. Lichtman recalled. Even at the end of this process, one woman burst into tears and said she was afraid she would be physically harmed, Mr. Lichtman said. He said the judge dismissed the woman from the pool.
Impaneling a jury took five days in the 2004 Martha Stewart trial in federal court in Manhattan. Lawyers for Ms. Stewart last year waged an unsuccessful challenge to her conviction based on a juror in the case who gave misleading answers on a selection questionnaire. A faster jury selection process "gives lawyers very few avenues to attack guilty verdicts on personal grounds," says Fordham University law professor Daniel Richman.
New York state court has one of the most liberal jury selection processes. Often the judges will leave the courtroom and allow the attorneys to take as long as they want to question potential jurors. But some state courts are beginning to follow the federal model of relying mainly on questionnaires. Last fall, Merck & Co. won a convincing defense verdict in New Jersey state court after it was sued by a man who alleged its painkiller Vioxx caused his heart attack. Questioning of jurors after the verdict showed several tended to be more pro-business.
Christopher Seeger, the attorney for the plaintiff, said the case was lost in the jury selection. "If I had an opportunity to flesh out some of the biases I believe I would've been able to talk some of those people off the jury," he says.
Others say the move toward speedier jury selection is a welcome one. "I think Enron ought to be a wake-up call to show everyone that it can be done," says Kent D. Sevyrud, dean of Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
| • | Split verdict on selecting juries quickly
Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2006 Byline: Paul Davies and John Emshwiller, WSJ Staff Reporters |
|---|
|
Related Information Related Groups:
|