Enterasys prosecution rebuts retrial motion

Securities fraud charges against Jerry Shanahan should not be dismissed because he didn’t get a speedy trial, especially since the former chief operating officer of Enterasys Networks just filed a motion to delay it, prosecutors said in a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

Shanahan’s attorney filed to dismiss the charges at the end of last month after learning for sure that the prosecution intends to move ahead with a retrial. In December, a federal jury convicted four other former Enterasys executives of inflating revenue when the Rochester-based Cabletron Systems spun off the company in 2001, but could not reach a verdict on Shanahan. Immediately afterward, Deputy U.S. Attorney William Morse told Judge Paul Barbadoro that he would decide about the retrial “very, very soon.”

While prosecutors didn’t reach a decision for six months, they did inform Shanahan’s attorney from the get-go to assume that they would be retrying the case unless they heard otherwise, according to the filing. However, they wouldn’t be able to get to it until July, since the lead counsel from Washington – Colleen A. Conry – had a big securities fraud trial coming up in December. Besides, they argued, this is such a complex case, that the court should waive the speedy trial rules.

In addition to refocusing the case on just one individual, prosecutors also might introduce evidence that wasn’t in the first trial, according to the filing.

After Shanahan’s speedy trial motion, the court moved the case up to July 10, but Shanahan argued that since he had only found out that the prosecution was moving ahead with its case, his attorney didn’t have enough time to prepare, and asked that the trial be set back to September. – BOB SANDERS