The government has rested. The jury has heard scores of taped conversations and a mountain of documents and other materials have been presented to the jury and introduced into evidence. Unlike most cases involving fraud and financial misconduct, where juries must piece together varying degrees of circumstantial evidence gleaned from documents alone, here the jury has direct evidence. Raj’s voice: kidding, cajoling, prodding, and insisting on obtaining inside information from his “friends” on the inside. All told according to the FBI agent who was the last witness to testify for the government, Raj earned over $60 million from trading on inside information. That’s a big number. It doesn’t look good for this … well … corpulent and rather cuddly bad guy.
What does he do?
On Monday, it’s the defense’s turn. Mr. Dowd, Raj’s lead counsel, can stand and with as much righteous indignation as he can muster, state in a loud clear voice, “the defense calls NO witnesses”. That’s what Barry Bond’s high-priced team has chosen. The bet underlying that tactic is that the jury is skeptical of the government’s case, and the defense argues that under the Constitution, yes that Constitution, a citizen ACCUSED of a crime need not prove their innocence. All they must do is demonstrate that the government failed to meet its burden of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Hmmmm. From what I’ve seen, that’s a non-starter here. The government’s case is just too strong. “What’s the best strategy then, Mr. Former Federal Prosecutor?”
I’d say you have to put Raj on the stand. First, he’s hardly a threatening presence. He’s a big teddy bear. He is smooth and persuasive. It only takes one juror to be seduced by his charm to keep him from what will more than likely be a long stay for him at a federal penitentiary. Second, remember he is the “tippee” not the “tipper”. What? Yes. The tipper is the “insider”. In this case there were many. Most notably was the Director of Goldman Sachs who literally called Raj from outside the Board Room with inside information on proposed mergers. Raj can try to argue that all these “tippers” are the real guilty parties and they are merely trying to save their skin by implicating Mr. Rajaratnam.
Will that work? Probably not. And as I’ve written before his best shot is going to be to appeal the court’s decision allowing the taped conversations into evidence despite rather sloppy, if not worse, conduct on behalf of the government in seeking the warrants necessary to wiretap conversations.
We’ll know come Monday.