Win over the jury early.
The government is off to a fast start. No need to wait or to call a bunch of technical witnesses to lay a foundation for your claims. The time to win over a jury is early; the sooner the better. If you wait until week 8, for example, many of the jurors will have already tuned out or made up their mind (right or wrong) and they are unlikely to consider new testimony. Their heels are dug in. They figure that if the government waited two months to present the evidence, it can’t be that important.
Following that strategy, batting lead-off, instead of at number three or four, is Raj’s friend from the Wharton School of business, Mr. Anul Kumar. (Technically, the government’s first witness was a Special Agent for the FBI who authenticated the audio tapes that lay at the heart of this case). Mr. Kumar dispassionately explained how the defendant offered him $500,000 per year for inside information. Moreover, Mr. Kumar explained how the defendant advised him to open a Swiss Bank account so those funds could be hidden from regulatory scrutiny and his employer.
Cross examination of Mr. Kumar by the defense will begin next week, but don’t expect some television-like reversal of his testimony. He is no doubt a very smart man who has been well prepared by the prosecutors. And worse for Mr. Rajaratnam, the jury has the weekend to let the testimony of this important witness sink in.