It’s now fairly clear that corporate corruption will continue in this country. Steven Scrushy, former CEO of HealthSouth, was found innocent by a moronic jury a few years ago, similar to the moronic jury that let Michael Jackson go free a while back. Five, that’s five, former CFO’s testified that Scrushy was well aware of phony numbers reporting and directed the CFO’s to report the phony numbers anyway.
The jury didn’t seem to care. They did not believe the former CFO’s. The defense claimed that there were no documents that demonstrated that Scrushy knew or gave such orders. As a former executive, let me clue in the moronic jury on how it works when hanky-panky is going on in a company.
The CEO is not stupid enough to put illegal activity in writing. Instead, they walk into the CFO’s office and orally tell them what to do. There will be no smoking gun. But, why would five former CFO’s all lie? Scrushy, of course, did not take the witness stand in his own defense.
Is it just me or are other people losing confidence in the jury system? The government believed that it had an extremely strong case. It certainly appeared so. But, the moronic jury probably did not understand most of the testimony and let the guy go free. In complicated business cases we should probably change the law and mandate that a jury trial is not available to a defendant. Or, in the alternative only have a jury pool that truly is a pool of the defendant’s peers, i.e., business executives who understand what the hell is going on. Some out of work truck driver is simply incapable of understanding complex business litigation. Justice is not being served here, it is being subverted, and the crimes will continue unabated to the detriment of shareholders throughout
