Legal Question (Andersen Verdict)

[IzzyR]

Lawyers May Move to Upset Andersen Conviction

At a news conference, jurors said that they had not unanimously accepted the government’s position that Andersen had obstructed justice by destroying thousands of documents related to Enron when the firm knew of an investigation into the company by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Instead, the jurors said, they concluded that Andersen was guilty because of the efforts by an Andersen lawyer, Nancy Temple, to remove certain information from a draft copy of a memorandum.

Members of the defense team argued that such a rationale means that Andersen was, in essence, convicted for something that was not a crime.
“What the jury fixated on with Nancy Temple is conduct that is simply not criminal,” said Charles Rothfeld, a lawyer for Andersen at the Washington office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. “What she did is what thousands of lawyers do every day across the country.”
Attempts to undo a jury verdict on the basis of public comments by jurors have little track record of success.

Question 1: Leaving aside the specifics of the Andersen verdict, suppose a jury explained their rationale for conviction (or acquittal) and it was clear that it was based on misunderstanding of the law, would this be grounds for overturning the verdict (IOW, is the “little track record of success” based on the fact that evidence is rarely clear enough on this matter, or is the law that the jury’s verdict simply stands?) This seems especially pertinent in light of the judge throwing out the verdict in the SF dog mauling case - it would be odd if a jury can be reversed based on evidence and but not based on law.

Question 2: How does this apply to the specifics of the Andersen case? (IOW, how strong is the claim that the revision of the memo is/isn’t a criminal act?)

[Cliffy]

There will probably be more thoughtful answers to come, but my general feeling is that this will be a very tough row to hoe. Although it is beastly unfair to Andersen that it was convicted on the basis of a jury’s misunderstanding of the law, we generally assume that juries will follow the legal instructions they are given – that’s why we give them instructions in the first place. Anyway, it’s essentially impossible (at least at the federal level) to overturn a verdict because the jury misunderstood the law. Usually, guilty verdicts are sacrosanct unless you can show evidence of bribery, extortion, intimidation, etc. – external influence.

The dog mauling case is a whole different animal – there, the judge found that no resonable jury could have found guilt based on the evidence presented. Here, a reasonable jury could very well have found that Andersen did commit a crime (such as by the shredding of documents); therefore, it’s not within the judge’s purview to take the question away from them. The judge can only remove a question from jury consideration if there’s only one answer a reasonbable jury could possibly give, even if it seems that the actual jury may have acted unreasonably.

–Cliffy

[toadspittle]

I don’t think you can say that the jurors misunderstood the law. They’re not supposed to understand the law. They’re not lawyers. They simply followed the judge’s instructions.

ENRON'S MANY STRANDS: THE DELIBERATIONS; Jurors Tell of Emotional Days in a...

The foreman then took over, jurors said, painstakingly leading them in the first few days through the instructions given by Judge Melinda F. Harmon, who presided over the trial. Ultimately those instructions — which required the jury to find the firm guilty if it found that one person had persuaded others to alter or destroy a document in order
to impede an official proceeding like a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation — were fatal to Andersen, Ms. McKay and Ms. Sorrell said.

“They just forced us to come back with a guilty verdict,” Ms. McKay said. “I’d like to know how the judge comes up with the instructions.”

…

“When we looked at the Nancy Temple stuff, and with the instructions that the judge gave us, there was no way we could not find Arthur Andersen guilty,” Ms. McKay said.