Will Jurors Send Enron's Lay, Skilling to Prison?

HOUSTON, May 17, 2006 — -- Fifteen weeks after they began hearing testimony, the jury in the Enron fraud trial finally gets down to deliberating today -- 4½ years after Enron collapsed in a spectacular implosion of accounting scandals.

Enron founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeff Skilling are charged with intentionally lying about the health of their company while dumping half a billion dollars of their own stock, charges that both vehemently deny.

Their defense attorneys were passionate in closing arguments. Skilling's attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, implored the jury to look at the facts.

"This was all manufactured after the fact. Because it is Enron. After all, somebody has to pay. It's Enron," he said.

Lay defense attorney Bruce Collins told jurors his client accepts full responsibility for Enron's failure, but he says, "Ken Lay committed no crimes."

Prosecutors, meanwhile, said the the jurors should ask themselves this: "Why did the defendants lie? The deception kept the story alive and the stock price up. When the stock price was high these men were on top of the world."

Enron was at one time the largest energy trader in the world. More than $60 billion in market value was lost when the company declared bankruptcy and unceremoniously sacked thousands of employees. It also froze its employees' 401(k) retirement programs for a time, and almost $2.1 billion in pensions were lost. Many workers found most of their life savings were wiped out, as Enron's stock plummeted from $90 a share to less than $1 a share in just weeks.

Charlie Prestwood is one of the former Enron employees waiting for the jury's verdict.

When he retired to his small rural home north of Houston after 33 years working in a power plant, he knew exactly what he had in his nest egg. "$1,310,570 and some few cents. That was my life savings," Prestwood said.

Today that nest egg is gone, and, like thousands of other former Enron employees, he is still struggling to recover from his loss. He says at his age, 67, he won't live long enough to ever recoup that money. Today he gets by on his Social Security checks, watches every penny he spends, and prays nothing will go wrong with his house, his truck or his health.