Fastow lawyer asks judge to move case
HOUSTON (AP) – A lawyer for former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow urged a judge to move his trial outside of Texas, claiming his client cannot get a fair trial in Enron’s hometown. Potential jurors will swear they can be fair and impartial, “but in this district the pressure on the jurors is going to be enormous,” defense attorney John W. Keker told a federal judge Tuesday. Prosecutor Linda Lacewell countered that publicity about the case isn’t enough to warrant a move. Fastow is entitled to a fair but not an ignorant jury, she said. “If that were true, no high profile case could ever be tried where the crime occurred,” she said. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt did not immediately rule on whether to move next year’s trial out of Houston. Hoyt also plans to hear arguments sometime next month about whether to postpone the April 20 trial. Fastow, who will turn 42 Monday, is charged with 98 counts of fraud, money laundering, insider trading and other charges for allegedly masterminding a plethora of schemes that hid Enron’s debt, inflated profits and allowed him to skim millions of dollars for himself, his family and selected friends and colleagues.
He is the most high-profile of more than two dozen former Enron executives charged.
– including his wife, Lea – in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into Enron’s scandal-ridden collapse in 2001. He has pleaded innocent to all charges and is free on $5 million bond.
Defense lawyers who initially requested a change of venue in late October said surveys conducted by a San Diego State University professor in June showed more than half of the people polled from the Houston, Austin and New Orleans areas had heard of Fastow’s case and believed him to be guilty.
Prosecutors responded that despite the defense’s polls, the 13-county area from which a Houston jury would be chosen has 4.7 million residents – enough to believe that impartial jurors can be selected. They said a detailed jury questionnaire can help lawyers eliminate obviously biased jurors before questioning begins.
And publicity would follow Fastow wherever the trial takes place, prosecutors said.
Defense lawyers, who did not specify a city where they would like to see the trial moved, said intensive, individual questioning of potential jurors wouldn’t be enough to weed out those already convinced of Fastow’s guilt because of the “unique combination of the personal impact on this community and the extensive publicity targeting one man.”
Thousands of employees lost their jobs and retirement accounts and investors lost billions of dollars when Enron collapsed and its stock became virtually worthless.
The judge overseeing Lea Fastow’s case last month rejected her request for a venue change, saying the selection process would weed out biased jurors. She is slated to go to trial Feb. 10 on charges of conspiracy and filing false tax forms for allegedly participating in some of her husband’s schemes.
AP-ES-12-16-03 1148EST