Jurors have found Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron executives, guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Sentencing is set for the week of September 11.
Good.
Will the sentence be long or arduous for either man?
Hard to say.
Will the sentence make up for the hardship incurred by former Enron employees and their families or mend the damage done to the ethics and practices of the American business community?
How could anything mitigate the damage done?
I read the New York Times article on the jury about who they are and how they came to make their decision.
I was struck by the clarity of their accounts and by the decisiveness of their verdict.
These jurors are quintissentially American: They are direct, active, confident, and able. They are proud of their personal values and they apply these values in their assessments of other people's actions.
These people practice good judgement.
These people are unafraid to hold themselves accountable for their own actions. They expect others to practice good judgment and ethical behavior.
These people are good role models for all of us, as we struggle to clarify who we are, what we stand for, and how to act.
Take Freddy Delgado, elementary school principle:
Freddy Delgado, an elementary-school principal, questioned how the two men could testify that they "had their hands firmly on the wheel" at Enron and then say that they did not know about the improper accounting and the intensifying financial problems?
After all, parents hold him accountable for their children's welfare and safety. "I can't say that I don't know what my teachers were doing in the classroom," Mr. Delgado said. "I am still responsible if a child gets lost."
"So I would say that to say that you didn't know what was going on in your own company," Mr. Delgado added, "was not the right thing."
Mr. Delgado held true to his personal values and used his values to judge the actions of the Enron executives. He committed himself, sacrificing a nice chunk his personal and professional time over the trial period, to be present for the Enron trial.
In return, he found he established common cause and a sense of community with his fellow jurors:
"We've cried together, we've laughed together and we really, really became more than just friends," he said. "I believe that we are a family and we supported each other with all the different things that happened in our lives within these four months.
Delgado and the other jurors found that when they took action in a common cause, they found the common good.
We are stronger when we act in community with each other.
These jurors applied their own values as persons and their experience as a community of jurors to the testimony they were reviewing. Their own willingness to be held accountable and to act within community gave them a benchmark against which to judge the behavior of the two men they sat in judgement upon:
Judge Lake commended and thanked the jurors for sitting through often obtuse and conflicting testimony. During the trial, they were shown thousands of pages of corporate documents and spreadsheets; they took 27 boxes worth of evidence with them into the jury room where they deliberated.
One juror contrasted their determination with Mr. Lay's and Mr. Skilling's approach to their top positions at Enron.
"Those of us that have full-time jobs, we did our jobs at night when we went home so tired we hardly knew who we were," said Carolyn Kuchera, a payroll manager. "We were responsible, we were always accountable and we always found a way to circle back around to tie up the loose ends."
"And I think those employees," she said about Enron workers, "were entitled to the same thing."
I hold these jurors up as role models for how we can all live lives of good intent and meaningful action.
I hold this jury deliberation up as a fine example of how our personal values can have meaning, may empower each of us, and how our personal values can be used to build community that is respectful of our private rights but safeguards the common good.
Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are no more and no less than George Bush and Dick Cheney.
If these twelve jurors, and their alternates, can use their personal values to take action and make judgement of the actions of Lay and Skilling, we can all take action and make judgement of the actions of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and other politicians like them, and begin to make a change.
It can be done by us. All for the common good.