Explanation:
I believe the toughest conflicts to resolve are the ones in which you must make a choice, but all the options contain an element that seems to violate a value that is important to you. It is difficult to do the right thing when the “perfect” right thing is not among the choices you seem to face.
I was indicted, to my complete surprise, in May 2003. I was charged by the DOJ with 20 counts of criminal wrongdoing, all associated (somehow) with lying about technology. The charges seemed inexplicable to me, so I resolved to fight them even though I was offered many opportunities to enter into deals with the DOJ. The problem with the deals was that, even though I was told by everyone that they were “favorable” towards me, they required me to lie about something. It wasn’t the punishment that bothered me as much as being asked to lie.
Therefore, I fought the DOJ tooth and nail for nine years. I gave up my life savings (everything that was not frozen by the DOJ), my home, my family time, my social life, etc. to defend myself. To stretch my resources, I made my defense a full-time job, doing as much work myself as I could manage in order to save on legal fees. I worked seven days a week, learning the law, researching my case, helping to draft motions and briefs, preparing for trial, etc.
I endured a 3 1/2-month trial in 2005 and beat the DOJ. After the trial, through jury and court decisions, 14 of the original 20 counts were acquitted; all that was left were six counts on which the jury had hung. Instead of dismissing the remaining counts after their trial defeat, the DOJ re-indicted me on the six hung counts. I then went through two long appeal processes [to get the six hung counts dismissed]; both appeals made it as far as petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court. But, ultimately, the Supreme Court did not hear my appeals, so it was on toward a second trial.
I dedicated myself to preparation for the re-trial. By this time, it was no longer simply a personal struggle. The DOJ continued to offer deals, but I felt that I had a mission to defeat the DOJ again at trial. I had seen too much in the justice process that was not honorable and not right. And I felt that the system would never get better if people like me, who had the resources and temperament to fight, gave up in favor of a deal. The DOJ deserved to get defeated decisively and publicly at trial. I was ready and eager for trial, with more than three dozen witnesses, including the most credible people available — my attorneys told me that they had never before seen a more impressive group of witnesses. I desperately wanted my day in court.
But then I ran out of money. And this is where the conflict arose.
I could borrow money from people who freely offered it to me to continue my defense. Or I could accept a deal with the DOJ, by this time a quite “reasonable” deal. Neither choice was good. The deal stuck in my craw because it was a contrivance intended mainly to offer an easy way out for the DOJ, essentially a negotiated mutual cease fire rather than a rational settlement. But borrowing money was all but unthinkable to me — I could not stomach the idea of using other people’s money to defend myself — I did not want to spread the terrible financial impact of my indictment beyond myself and, most certainly, not to good friends.
Ultimately, I chose the deal. I simply could not ask others to accept a financial risk on my behalf when a deal was being offered by the DOJ that everybody told me was extremely favorable to me. I felt that using other people’s money to fight the DOJ would be self-indulgent, given the other options on the table. So my resolution was to accept the deal offered by the DOJ.
The truth is that I am not sure that this conflict has been resolved. I will always feel that I let others down, others caught in the same kind of insane trap which had ensnared me, by not seeing the fight through and finally beating the DOJ again at trial, decisively and publicly. Such a defeat might have helped those others in a way that a hollow deal cannot. Therefore, while I made a decision which ended one conflict, it really only launched another, and more intense, internal conflict which will be with me forever.
[You can read about the struggles of Rex Shelby and other Enron Broadband executives in two recently published books: Blogging Enron: The Enron Broadband Story by author and blogger, Cara Ellison; and Acquittal: An Insider Reveals the Stories and Strategies Behind Today’s Most Infamous Verdicts by prominent trial consultant, Richard Gabriel.
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