Legal News

As Lawyer Takes the Witness Stand, a Jury Looks Confused

By Chris Herring

A couple of unordinary things have transpired this week at the trial of Joseph Collins, the Mayer Brown partner who was accused of having prior knowledge of a Refco scam that cost investors $2.4 billion. Click here for a previous LB post on Collins.

First, the man presiding over the case, Judge Leonard Sand of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has Lyme disease and recently told lawyers on each side that he can no longer take the case. He was replaced this week by Judge Robert Patterson.

Also interesting to us: that a lawyer would take the witness stand in his own case. That happened yesterday. It was so interesting, it seemed to us, that we had to make our way down to 500 Pearl Street to check it out.

For the most part, Collins seemed comfortable. Though he had a lot of stutters in his speech, he normally crafted his responses after taking some time to think. A few times, he asked for questions to repeated or clarified.

Once he crafted those responses, though, he really sounded like a lawyer.

Asked by his defense attorney to define a wire transaction, Collins began a long description. “This might come off as a bit professorial,” he said before diving into how wire transactions work. The explanation took nearly five minutes.

The jury didn’t appear too lost during that description. One man in the jury nodded his head as Collins explained, apparently totally grooving to Collins’s vibe.

Jurors seemed a bit confused, though, when Mr. Collins described stock trades and futures. When he mentioned what T+1 and T+3 meant, a few of the jurors looked at each other, not sure what to think.

The jury’s business lesson ended abruptly when Patterson told the defense that it would have to recess until Thursday to make sure a member of the jury could catch her train. Apparently, a jury member had missed her 5:00 p.m. train home the day before when arguments ran late.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).