Gearing Up for Trial When trial preparation began in earnest, in early autumn 2003, several things had changed.
Gearing Up for Trial When trial preparation began in earnest, in early autumn 2003, several things had changed. AUSA Tim Coleman was promoted to Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in Washington, DC. Inspector Sharma left the Adelphia investigation to pursue a $20 million investment fraud and blackmail case. Coleman was replaced by AUSA Owens, who joined Clark to lead the trial team. Owens recruited a third prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Judd C. Lawler, who had litigated and won a stay in Adelphia’s multi-district civil litigation. Two full-time paralegals, Margaret Lee and Jill Ottenberg, were brought in. Inspector Sharma was replaced by rookie Inspector Kurtis S. Roinestad. Finally, the government found its key trial witness, someone who had so far avoided being interviewed: Adelphia’s former Vice President of Finance Jim Brown. Trial preparation for Adelphia was routine—except for the scale of the work. Witnesses were interviewed, documents reviewed, and exhibits identified, marked, and organized. An early witness list for the prosecution named 53 people. Roughly six million pages had to be scanned by a contractor into a searchable Intranet database. By the start of trial, paralegals Lee and Ottenberg had prepared and turned over to the defense more than 10,000 exhibits. In January 2004, Inspector James Bachman went to Coudersport to preserve key digital evidence on defendants’ computers. Because not every witness could travel to New York, Inspectors and AUSAs from the trial team found themselves driving though a snowstorm to interview potential witnesses in Coudersport, and later flying to Washington, DC, to accommodate another witness’ schedule.
