Legal News

Rajaratnam Trial Starts, Though Not Exactly With a Bang

By Ashby Jones

The very beginning of a high-profile criminal trial often proves anticlimactic. It’s like showing up for a movie on opening night only to be greeted with a three-hour lecture on the history of the font used for the credits. (“The earliest known uses of the sans-serif font were by the Etruscans in the 5th Century, B.C. . . . “)

And so it went in Day One of the Raj Rajaratnam insider-trading trial, as the day was largely taken up with the often paint-dryingly slow process of picking a jury.

Richard Holwell, the judge presiding over the case, asked jurors about areas of potential bias, including their views on Wall Street executives.

“The purpose of my questions is to enable us to select a fair and impartial jury for this trial,” the judge said. According to this story by the WSJ’s Chad Bray and Jenny Strasburg, the process could take several days. Click here for coverage by Bloomberg; here for NYT coverage.

Meanwhile, Rajaratnam, dressed in a black sport coat and a tie, sat at a table near the front of the courtroom, surrounded by seven members of his legal team.

About 100 jurors were packed into a courtroom on the top floor of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. The judge asked jurors to raise their hands if they had any knowledge of Rajaratnam and the allegations or if their views on wealthy individuals might affect their ability to serve as fair jurors. By the lunch break, 13 potential jurors had been dismissed from the jury pool.

At least one potential juror was dismissed after the judge raised questions about ownership of one of the companies at issue in the trial. It wasn’t clear what company the potential juror owned.

But according to Bray and Strasburg, the day wasn't all heavy stuff. There were a few instances of unrehearsed levity-like when a potential juror said she might know one of the 100-plus individuals the judge said could surface in testimony. She asked the judge for the middle initial of a John O'Connor, acknowledging that it's a common name and she was trying to rule out a connection. Asked by the judge what the link might be, the woman replied, "It was just my ex-husband."

The courtroom-prosecutors and defense lawyers included-cracked up.

Separately another woman in the jury pool disclosed, as requested, that she does in fact know a hedge-fund manager. Asked for more info, she matter-of-factly identified the fund manager as one David Tepper-the famed billionaire boss of Appaloosa Management. Tepper is not involved in the Galleon case; the juror remained in the jury pool.

Late in the day, Judge Holwell said he expected opening statements to begin as early as Wednesday.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 08, 2011 (boomark / email).