Problems With Enron Voir Dire?

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling's Supreme Court appeal made two arguments: that the honest-services law is too vague, and that jury selection was too cursory. Most of the hour of arguments was spent on the questioning of the potential jurors.

In his brief rebuttal at the conclusion of arguments Skilling's lawyer, Sri Srinivasan compared the five hours spent questioning the jury pool to "the Martha Stewart case, for example . . . there were six days of voir dire, . . . And in that case, the only reason you needed an extended voir dire was because of the celebrity status of the defendant.  You didn't have the deep-seated community passion and prejudice that characterized the Houston venue in this case."