Jurors in the federal trial of an Ohio State University professor accused of insider trading heard opening arguments Wednesday.
Assistant U-S Attorney Michael Marous took the six-man, six-woman jury through a complex explanation for what he called a simple case of insider trading. O-S-U Marketing Professor Roger Blackwell and four others face a total of 48 counts, including insider trading, conspiracy and obstructing a federal investigation by lying to federal investigators. If found guilty, the 64-year-old Blackwell faces a possible prison term of 10 years and a one-million-dollar fine. Blackwell and the other defendants have pleaded not guilty. Federal prosecutor Marous named more than a dozen people who allegedly benfitted from insider knowledge about a buyout of Worthington Foods by the Kellogg company in 1999. Blackwell was on Worthington Foods' Board of Directors. Marous says Blackwell provided confidential and secret information about the buyout to his life-long friend, defendant Justin Voss, , to his son Christian Blackwell, his father Dale Blackwell, defendant kelly Hughes, the office manager at Blackwell Associates, her husband, Kevin Stacy, also a defendant, and defendant Arnold Jack, Blackwell's attorney and business partner. Those named made a profit totalling 890-thousand dollars in six weeks. Prosecutor Marous told juroros they will hear evidence of a conspiracy among the defendants to lie to investigators to cover-up their crimes. Blackwell's attorney, Thomas Gorman, asked jurors to listen to all the evidence, including that which will show that Blackwell kept information gleaned as a Worthington Foods board member confidential. That he even told his own father "no Comment", when it came to insider information about the pending sale of Worthington Foods to Kelloggs. Gorman said there were crimes committed, but not by Blackwell and the other defendants. Instead, Gorman pointed to Blackwell's ex-wife, Kristina Stephan and Jack Kahl, former chief executive an Avon-based duct-tape maker. Stephan and Kahl have been given immunity by federal prosecutors and they will testify for the prosecution against Blackwell. Gorman characterized the immunity for testimony as a "get out of jail free card". The defense asked jurors to look at the defendants patterns of stock purchases over a period of years, and that purchases of Worthington Foods stock just prior to the buyout were normal transactions by people who are used to buying stocks, and not as a result of any insider information from Blackwell. Blackwell is a longtime professor of marketing at Ohio State and has donated millions of dollars to the university. The Business school's hotel is named after him. The insider trdaing trial before U-S District Judge James Graham could last from three to six weeks. Howard Ornstein...WOSU News.