Coke Secrets Trial: Jury Deliberations Begin
By Duane Stanford, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Feb. 1–Jurors will continue deliberations today in the case against a former Coca-Cola secretary accused of trying to sell company trade secrets to PepsiCo.
The 12-person jury — five men and seven women — got the case Wednesday after hearing closing arguments. The jurors deliberated for about 3 1/2 hours before being sent home for the evening.
At one point, jurors sent a note to the judge asking whether Williams had ever been married. The attorney for Williams said during the trial she had never been married, but jurors made note of a Coke employment form on which Williams said she was. Williams’ father, waiting near the courtroom, said his daughter has never been married.
During arguments earlier in the day, Assistant U.S. Attorney BJay Pak said defendant Joya Williams hatched a plan to steal and sell confidential marketing documents and sample test products from Coke because she was deeply in debt.
“This case is about desperate times calling for criminal measures,” Pak said.
Defense Attorney Janice Singer countered by comparing Williams to Richard Jewell, the security guard who was reported to be a focus of a federal investigation into the 1996 bombing at Centennial Olympic Park. He later was cleared of suspicion.
“They destroyed his life,” Singer said of Jewell. “They acted rashly, and they acted hastily.”
Williams, 41, faces 10 years in prison if convicted on a single charge of selling corporate trade secrets. Two alleged accomplices, Edmund Duhaney of Decatur and Ibrahim Dimson of New York, have pleaded guilty to the same charge. They await sentencing in the case.
Pak began his closing argument saying the case boils down to four letters: “C-O-L-A.”
Pak said “C” stood for the “cash” Williams allegedly got for her part in the scheme. Duhaney, a longtime family friend who testified against Williams, said he gave her $4,000 — her part of a cash payment from an undercover FBI agent who posed as a PepsiCo representative. Prosecutors showed Williams deposited $4,000 cash into her bank account days after Dimson received the payment from the agent.
During testimony Tuesday, Williams said she had built up $45,000 in credit card debt.
The “O,” Pak went on during his closing, stood for the “ongoing access” to Coke documents that Williams enjoyed as an administrative assistant to a high-ranking Coke marketing executive. Dimson told the undercover FBI agent that he could get more documents anytime he wanted.
As for “L,” Pak said that represents lies he said Williams told after her arrest and during her testimony at trial.
Pak said “A” stood for the “acts” Williams committed that showed she was a willing conspirator.
To find Williams guilty of conspiracy under the federal Corporate Espionage Act, jurors will have to believe Williams committed specific acts in an effort to carry out the plot to sell trade secrets with Dimson and Duhaney. It wouldn’t be enough for her to have simply stolen the documents, the judge instructed jurors.
In her closing argument, Singer said the prosecution’s case is full of holes and the selective use of evidence.
“You are here to decide whether the government has proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Singer told the jurors. “They have absolutely, 100 percent, failed to meet that burden.”
Singer said testimony by Duhaney, a key prosecution witness, was a “waste of time.” At trial, Duhaney said Williams came up with the idea to sell the Coke materials. But Singer said the evidence shows Duhaney and Dimson kept Williams in the dark about their scheme and stole a key to her apartment to get documents she brought home from work to store.
“There is little truth associated with Edmund Duhaney,” Singer said. “Duhaney’s story makes very little sense. It alone is a reasonable doubt.”
Singer pointed out that Dimson and Duhaney planned to give Williams only $150,000 of the $1.5 million they negotiated for the most sensitive documents.
Singer used a portion of her closing argument to rebut damaging testimony Tuesday by a Coca-Cola contractor, Clifton Carroll, who denied giving Williams $4,000 in cash last June, as she claimed. Williams testified the $4,000 she deposited into her account in June came from Carroll, not from Dimson and Duhaney as prosecutors alleged.
Singer said Carroll, who did admit making two small loans to Williams at other times, had reason to lie to protect his lucrative contracts with Coke. Singer said Coke would have frowned on Carroll giving money to Williams. The two met when Williams worked as a minority-owned business mentor for Coke’s chief bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises, where she helped Carroll win Coke contracts.
Singer concluded her argument Wednesday by discounting the prosecution’s assertion that Williams was a full participant in the alleged conspiracy. Singer even alluded to Williams’ erratic testimony during the trial, saying sarcastically, “The government wants you to believe that Joya, who you saw on the stand, is the mastermind of this conspiracy.”
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