Last week, I said it was like watching a football team between two equally strong opponents. At the end of week two, the most fitting sports analogy might be watching NASCAR. It can be exciting to watch the fast, powerful cars go around and around, but let’s face it, everyone’s waiting for the wreck. Although some purists might argue the point, it’s not a good race without a couple of good spinouts.
The centerpiece of the this week was Bill Owens, a former controller and CFO of HealthSouth. Owens was the guy who went to work wearing a wire to secretly record conversations with Richard Scrushy. The investigators say they were also looking for evidence concerning other conspirators, but since they only taped conversations picked up by the transmitter, that the investigators deemed to be material, it seems unlikely they were interested in anyone but Scrushy.
With Owens on the stand, the prosecution built a convincing case. Owens spoke of numerous conversations where he told Richard Scrushy the exact nature of the fraud, and Scrushy ordered him to continue. He said that he only took the CFO job on the condition that he could help make the books legitimate, but that Scrushy was intent on continuing the fraud, and could not let him take steps to end it. He also portrayed a HealthSouth culture that was entirely under the control of Richard Scrushy. He would make corporate decisions at every level, from the most trivial up to a close involvement with the financial mechanisms of the company. Toward the end of the week, Owens described the events that preceded the unraveling of the conspiracy, and the beginning of the firestorm that would lead to the investigation, the indictments, and an unscheduled pit stop in the Hugo L. Black courthouse.
The portrait that emerges, of HealthSouth with Richard Scrushy at the helm, is that it would be inconceivable that a massive fraud could be perpetrated in the company without Scrushy not only having knowledge of the fraud, but being involved in it. At least that’s what it looks like when cars are going ‘round and ‘round. The track’s running fast and everything is going smooth. But danger is ahead. Simultaneous with the evidence of the trial, dots are being connected and a portrait of Scrushy is also beginning to emerge as the kind of person who would be the centerpiece of this kind of drama: From the legion of supporters attending the trial from his church, the regal appearances of Leslie Scrushy and his “I didn’t do anything wrong” diatribe from the tape of the HealthSouth’s management convention. The two images are running in parallel, right now, and it remains to be seen if they will fuse or diverge as the trial winds to its conclusion.
Next week, it will be the defense’s turn to examine Bill Owens. In light of the damaging testimony he has already provided, the defense will do anything and everything to destroy Owens’ credibility and neutralize his effectiveness in this trial. If they can do that, the defense and Richard Scrushy, might be in pretty good shape.
It is unknown how they will attack Owens, but it will probably be on all fronts: His memory of the details, his motive, his character.
At the beginning of this week, fueled by the anxious media, the courtroom was buzzing about hearing the tapes made when Bill Owens was wired. But since the tapes were made during the investigation in 2003, and Owens had a long career at HealthSouth, the prosecution spent the week winding through his years with the company, and the birth and maturation of a conspiracy. So we heard a lot of things but we never heard the tapes. This means that when the trial resumes on Tuesday, there will be the same buzz as a prelude to finally what the tapes will have to offer.
But the real buzz, the real fireworks, will take place later in the week, when the prosecution passes the witness to Parkman and company, a spin-out waiting to happen.
