"The Blood Sporting of Picking Off CEOs"

On one team I am acquainted with, the defense counsel were getting a bad vibe from the jury, so they cut a deal with the government that included a severe penalty, but not a lengthy prison sentence. The tycoon blamed the jury consultant for not foreseeing the negative karma and the PR firm for not convincing the universe of potential jurors to appreciate his social conscience. The tycoon stiffed the jury and PR consultants, but not his attorneys because, as he explained to one of his operatives, Them I need. Indeed, Martha Stewart's jury consultant had to sue her erstwhile client for $74,000 in unpaid bills. If that's all she's out, she's lucky.

The Class War is on once the networks start running segments that juxtapose workers who've lost their pensions with aerial photos of the Mogul-Pariah's 30,000 square foot crib on Further Lane in Amagansett.

Publicity stunts are bandied about, such as these, taken from cases I know: The lily-white Mogul-Pariah joins an inner-city church. The oilman airs soft-focus ads promoting wind power (wind is about right). Enron's Ken Lay conducting television interviews, dappled with references to his being the humble son-of-a-pastor.

If criminal charges are filed, the objective is no longer reputation recovery; it's reasonable doubt. Some jurors will, God willing, recognize the difference between a risk that didn't fly and a criminal conspiracy. Acquittal is possible if the accused can sell the jury a plausible alternative narrative—what I like to call the P.A.N.

An appeals court dismissed most of the claims New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer brought against former New York Stock Exchange boss Richard Grasso, in part because the action came off like class warfare—a zillionaire's son against a tough Italian kid from Queens, no less.

HealthSouth's Richard Scrushy's acquittal in his 2005 accounting fraud trial was due partly to the fact that five of his former chief financial officers had already pleaded guilty, which reinforced the argument that others were responsible.

When tycoons stare us down from magazine covers with folded arms and badass expressions, however, they surrender the "I was in the dark" argument. In the most challenging litigation I've toiled through, the central conflict has been reconciling the Mogul-Pariah's need to be embraced as both an omniscient wizard and a clueless naif.

As with a mugging, the Mogul-Pariah's goal isn't to save his fortune or image, it's to get out alive. Survival depends upon variables such as the severity of the offense, the depth and tenor of repentance, and having the will and resources to fight back when you've got a viable P.A.N. Finally, there's accepting that one's second act, if it occurs at all, will play out on a humbler platform over time. Lots of time.

In Michael Clayton, George Clooney's eponymous corporate fixer is confronted by a big shot client demanding to know why Clayton failed to deliver the miracle he was promised. Clayton's response: I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The smaller the mess you made, the easier it is for me to clean up.