Judge calls for restraint as Enron trial begins

HOUSTON — Before the opening statements, before the first of dozens of witnesses is called to the stand, a federal judge calmly spelled out for an audience of about 100 people what the trial of two former Enron Corp. chief executives will not be about.

It will not, U.S. District Judge Sim Lake told potential jurors, be a forum for anyone who wants to strike a blow for justice and “right the wrongs” of the accounting scandal that came to symbolize an era of corporate chicanery.

It will not, he said, be about sympathy for the thousands of people who lost their jobs, and in many cases their retirement savings, in the energy giant’s collapse.

And, the judge said, it certainly will not be about pretending none of the jury pool has seen, read or heard any of the practically unavoidable publicity that has surrounded the approach of the trial.

“All of us has been exposed to substantial media attention from this case,” Lake said Monday before he and lawyers for the prosecution, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling began questioning individual jurors, ultimately settling on a panel of eight women and four men to hear the case.

That jury will be asked to decide whether Lay and Skilling orchestrated the accounting scheme that sank Enron in hopes of keeping its credit rating and stock price high — and their own pockets well-lined. Opening statements were set for this morning.

Lake told potential jurors they would not be expected to “blot out” news reports they have already absorbed about the trial. But he made clear he expected the jurors to judge the case only on the evidence they see over what could be the next four months.

“We are not looking for people who want to right a wrong or provide remedies for those who suffered in the collapse of Enron,” said Lake, an even-tempered judge who speaks with a Texas twang.

Lake has repeatedly turned away defense attempts to have the trial moved out of Houston on grounds the jury pool here was hopelessly tainted by news coverage of the Enron scandal.

And so Lay, 63, and Skilling, 52, found themselves standing in an 11th-floor courtroom mere blocks from what once was Enron headquarters in downtown Houston, rising when their names were called in the morning and facing the potential jurors.

Lay, the Enron founder who returned as CEO briefly in late 2001 before the company went under, would answer only, “Fine, how are you?” when a reporter asked him outside court how he was feeling.

Skilling, who faces 31 criminal counts to Lay’s seven, declined to comment as he headed into court.