After 52 witnesses over 53 days, testimony ended Monday morning in the fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Jurors now will have a week to think about the case before closing arguments begin next week, and they could begin deliberations by May 17.

The defense pared its final witness list to two on Monday, and the government, which had indicated it would call 10 rebuttal witnesses, instead cut testimony to only three people. Jurors were dismissed until next Monday, and they were reminded by presiding U.S. District Judge Sim Lake not to discuss or read about the trial before they return to court.

During the prosecution’s rebuttal on Monday, oil and natural gas executive Mike Muckleroy testified that, “Under certain business exigencies, I have known Mr. Lay not to tell the truth.”

Muckleroy, who now lives in Florida, said he first knew Lay in the 1970s and worked for Lay for several years before and after Enron was founded in 1985. In 1987, Muckleroy witnessed some illegal activity by “rogue” energy traders in Enron’s Valhalla, NY offices. The incident was reported to Lay, but instead of contacting authorities, Lay kept the traders on the payroll and allegedly tried to cover up the problems. The prosecution had wanted to introduce the Valhalla incident when it presented its case, but Lake ruled the incident was not relevant to the trial.

Muckleroy told jurors he was fired from Enron in 1992 because he wasn’t a team player.

“I’d been very unhappy with the direction that Mr. Lay had set for the company and some of the people he had hired, including the other defendant, Mr. Skilling,” Muckleroy testified.

Patti Kline, a former employee with Portland General Electric (PGE), once an Enron subsidiary, testified for the prosecution that after Lay took over the CEO post when Skilling resigned in August 2001, she believed him when he told employees there was “no other shoe to drop.” However, as more problems within the company surfaced, she said, “I became very emotional…I became very upset.” PGE line workers, she said, began to mock Lay by dropping shoes when they climbed electric poles to repair power lines.

Kline also said she was not aware of Lay’s $70 million in stock sales in 2001.

“Would you have wanted to know?” asked prosecutor Rob Atkins.

“Yes, I would have wanted to know about that,” said Kline. “I had been tracking [Lay’s] and other officers’ [stock] selling, and I never saw any selling like that…If you track it and you see a sudden big spike in sales, you want to know because it could affect you personally.”

Defense lawyer George Secrest reminded Kline in his cross-examination that Lay had not broken the law by not reporting the stock sales. Kline responded, “The more straightforward you can be the better off you are. And that was a large amount of money.”

Lay’s final character witness earlier Monday was Ed Young, a well-known minister of Second Baptist Church in Houston, who spent about 10 minutes on the stand. He called Lay trustworthy and said he was a good friend.

“I believe he loves God, I believe he works hard and I believe he’s a man who keeps his word,” Young told jurors. But he said it was not his job to decide if Lay was guilty or not.

“I think the jury will decide, they are fully capable of that,” Young said.

Lay, who is being tried on six counts, and Skilling, who is being tried on 28 counts, are accused of fraud and conspiracy for lying to investors and Enron employees about the company’s financial health. Skilling also is accused of insider trading and lying to auditors.

When jurors begin deliberations next week, Lake will try a separate case against Lay without a jury. Lay is charged with four counts of personal bank fraud, including making false statements to banks. Each charge carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines. Prosecutors allege Lay obtained $75 million in loans from three banks but reneged on an agreement with the banks that he would not use the money to carry or buy margin stock. The loans were collateralized by Lay’s Enron stock. The four charges originally were part of the case now before jurors.

On his website (www.kenlayinfo.com), Lay wrote, “The remaining four charges in my indictment relate to personal banking charges, which are based on arcane laws initially enacted during the Great Depression. These four charges have nothing to do with Enron. My legal team can find no record during this law’s 70-year existence of these provisions ever being used against a bank customer (like me) until now.”

In other news, Mike Ramsey, Lay’s lead lawyer, was in court on Monday after being gone for more than a month because of heart problems. He did not question any of the witnesses. Also, Lake informed jurors that one of the four jury alternates had called in sick, and she was excused from the panel.

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