In an expected move, former Enron Corp. CEO and COO Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and former Chief Accounting Officer Richard Causey filed a motion Monday stating that Phoenix, Denver or Atlanta would be fairer places in which to try their criminal case than Houston.
Because of the intense negative publicity and public feelings in Houston surrounding Enron, the defendants contend that they cannot receive a fair trial in Houston. The three men have been charged with leading a wide-ranging conspiracy to hide extensive financial problems at Enron.
The first criminal trial involving Enron’s business operations recently was concluded in Houston in what is commonly known as the Nigerian Barge case, where the jury found four former Merrill Lynch & Co. executives and a former Enron vice president guilty of participating in a scheme to manipulate Enron’s earnings. A sixth defendant — Sheila Kahanek, a former Enron accountant — was acquitted.
In the motion to change venue, the Skilling legal team supplied results from surveys they had commissioned of public attitudes in Houston toward the former Enron president. According to the surveys, nearly 32% of the people surveyed in Houston used negative statements to describe Skilling, which was roughly three times the number in Phoenix or Denver. The survey revealed that Houston residents used such terms as “despicable,” “deceitful,” “thief,” “weasel,” “the devil” and “guilty as sin” to describe Mr. Skilling, in particular.
A request to change venue is not uncommon in high-profile cases such as this one. However, there is substantial risk in requesting one. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake will decide the issue and, if he is inclined to grant the motion, he will choose the new location for the trial. So, for example, if Judge Lake decides to move the venue of the trial from Houston to another location within the Southern Federal District of Texas, the case could be transferred to an even more unfriendly venue for the defendants, such as the Rio Grande Valley of Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the Valley, a predominantly Hispanic jury pool will likely not take kindly to a group of wealthy white executives on trial for defrauding investors. Accordingly, like almost everything associated with the case, the motion to change venue is high risk, a lesson that Mr. Lay learned recently in regard to another motion that he had filed.
On the other hand, if there was ever a case for a change of venue, it’s an Enron defendant in Houston. Inasmuch as the prosecution batted .833 on a flimsy case in the recently concluded Nigerian Barge trial, the government would be justified in concluding that they are shooting fish in a barrel by prosecuting Enron defendants in Houston.