Why am I not surprised?
Tyco Judge Declares Mistrial
By Carrie Johnson and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 2, 2004; 1:44 PM
After 12 days of sometimes tumultuous jury deliberation, a mistrial was declared this afternoon in the trial of two Tyco International executives charged with looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Michael J. Obus, who declared the mistrial in the case of former Tyco Chairman Dennis Kozlowski and former chief financial officer Mark Swartz, acted after a juror identified by name last weekend in several news stories reported that she had received some form of external communication, wire services said.
Steve Kaufman, Kozlowski's attorney, said, "We are disappointed because of events that occurred outside of the courtroom that this case did not reach a verdict." He declined to elaborate.
The judge's action came after a six-month trial and jury deliberations described at one point in a note from the jury as "poisonous," revolving around a holdout jury member who attracted widespread publicity, visits from reporters and, most recently, the reported external communication.
Referring to the juror, Obus said today that "there has been no finding that this juror has done anything wrong . . . A great disservice may have been done to her and her family."
Prosecutors said they would seek a new trial as soon as possible.
The Tyco case, along with the Enron and MCI accounting scandals, had become emblematic of the corporate excesses, fraud and bookkeeping shenanigans that had accompanied the stock market bubble of the late 1990s.
