Word: juror
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...juror offered her view that when things went to hell at Tyco, the Ivy League--educated, Waspy board of directors closed ranks and served up, in her words, the "Polack and the Jew" on a platter for a D.A. eager to make an example of somebody--anybody--for the corporate greed of the late '90s. (Never mind that there was no testimony about Kozlowski's roots or that Swartz is even Jewish.) That was the first indication that the soon-to-be-infamous Juror No. 4, Ruth Jordan, wasn't going to make our job any easier. Jordan...
...dust has barely settled since the Tyco jury was sent home after a mistrial was declared. I was Juror No. 11, and I'm not at all sure how I feel. Numb, mostly. Disappointed. Angry. Could I really have just spent six months of my life on one of the signature corporate-fraud cases of the Wall Street bubble only to have the judge rule that it must be started again from scratch, like some do-over in a childhood kickball game? How did it come to this...
...shocked when I was placed on the panel, since I'd once worked as an investment banker. I didn't think the prosecution would want a juror who had been active on Wall Street during a go-go era and might well see nothing wrong with fat bonuses and lavish parties for men generating great wealth for the company. I certainly did not enter the case with a vendetta against the defendants, who were accused of taking tens of millions of dollars in unauthorized bonuses and essentially using Tyco assets as a giant piggy bank to fund their lavish lifestyles...
...other hand, a few jurors felt from the start that these guys were crooks. I expressed the view, shared by at least one fellow juror, that while I didn't buy much of the prosecution's case, I was troubled by the four bonuses charged as separate grand larcenies--totaling about $145 million--that the two divvied up. I felt fairly sure while listening to the testimony and absolutely certain after checking the financial documents during deliberations that three of those bonuses were illegal. They were supposed to be approved by the board's compensation committee; they were...
...raced to finish that afternoon. Jordan wavered again and again before acceding to any guilty verdicts, though there was a consensus just as strong in the opposite direction on more than half of the charges. Still, it seemed we might complete the task. Before we left for the day, Juror No. 5 reasonably suggested that we ask the court for an extra half-hour to finally put this all to rest. Jordan, in particular, objected. She needed an extra night to think it over...