Tyco Larceny Trial Nears End

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Attorneys for former Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz presented their closing arguments in a New York courtroom today. Kozlowski was Tyco's CEO, Swartz its chief financial officer. If all this is sounding familiar, it is. This is a retrial. A mistrial was declared the first time after a lone holdout juror was identified in the media. She then received a letter at home, urging her to convict. Kozlowski and Swartz are accused of stealing $156 million of company funds. NPR's Nancy Solomon was in the courtroom today, and joins us.

And, Nancy, remind us, please, what this case is all about. What are they alleged to have done here?

NANCY SOLOMON reporting:

Well, what people are likely to remember are the salacious details: Kozlowski's $6,000 shower curtain, the toga party with the Michelangelo ice sculpture that indelicately spouted champagne. But the case is really about corporate governance. Did the board sanction Kozlowski's perks because they were getting their cut, and now that they're facing shareholder lawsuits, they're crying foul, or, as the prosecution contends, did Kozlowski hide his bonuses and perks in plain site, fooling the board while stealing hundreds of millions in company dollars?

BLOCK: Now the first trial generated a lot of attention in the media, a lot of coverage, ended in a mistrial. What's the atmosphere like this time around?

SOLOMON: Well, it's mellowed a bit, maybe from a three-ring circus down to one ring. Last year, there was much more media interest, most notably from TV networks hot off the Martha trial. And then there was Juror No. 4...

BLOCK: Martha Stewart, in other words.

SOLOMON: Yes. And there was the Juror No. 4 debacle. This year, there's virtually no TV reporters in the courtroom. But at least Juror No. 4 continues to come and cause twitters. She's been here every day since the defense began to put on its case, and she's taking copious notes and hanging out with the defendants during the breaks. And so maybe we're going to see a book from her titled "I Am Juror No. 4"(ph) or something like that.

BLOCK: Well, let's talk about closing arguments. The defense began theirs today, will continue tomorrow. Were they similar to the arguments you heard in the first trial a year ago?

SOLOMON: There are a lot of similarities, but the defense attorneys are doing a much better job of aggressively poking holes in the prosecution's case. Last time, they seemed so certain that criminal intent had not been proved that they didn't really bother to mount much of a defense. This time, they're spending a lot of time trying to discredit the board of directors and the board's lawyers. They're bolstering the images of Kozlowski's underlings as not just mere dupes who would have allowed this to happen. And they're pointing out a lot of discrepancies in the testimony. So they're really taking a much more active part at trying to hammer away at the case.

BLOCK: And no doubt, the prosecution took a lesson from the last trial. They start their closing arguments tomorrow. What do you expect to hear from them?

SOLOMON: Well, they've got to do a very similar thing that the defense is doing. They've got to come in and improve their closing over last year's version. They've got to tell the jury exactly what testimony and what documents relate to which of the 23 charges. The closing last year was all over the place, and it never really gave the jurors a road map to how to put the pieces of evidence together with the actual indictment.

So they've really got to walk the jury through that very carefully, and they have to convince the jurors that there was criminal intent. That was one of the major interests of the jury from all of their notes that came out last time around, so they've got to do a better job of proving criminal intent.

BLOCK: OK. Nancy, thanks a lot.

SOLOMON: You're welcome.

BLOCK: NPR's Nancy Solomon in New York.

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