Alleging Errors, Quattrone Requests New Trial

Frank Quattrone, the former star Silicon Valley investment banker convicted this month of obstructing justice, on Tuesday requested a new trial, citing “unorthodox and confusing” jury instructions.

Lawyers for Quattrone said U.S. District Judge Richard Owen misled jurors about the legal standards the government was required to meet to prove the ex-banker guilty.

“These errors were highly prejudicial to the defense and seriously compromised the fairness of the trial,” Quattrone lawyers said in papers filed in federal court in Manhattan.

Federal prosecutors did not immediately return a call for comment on the motion.

Quattrone, among the best-known investment bankers of the late-1990s’ technology stock boom, was convicted May 3 of obstructing a federal probe into the allocation of hot new stocks at his brokerage, Credit Suisse First Boston.

The case hinged on a 22-word e-mail Quattrone sent to subordinates at the bank in December 2000 suggesting that bankers should “clean up those files.”

In particular, Quattrone lawyers objected to a portion of the judge’s instruction to jurors in which he explained the concept of “reasonable doubt” about the guilt of a defendant.

Owen said at the time that it was “practically impossible for a person to be absolutely and completely convicted of any controverted fact which by its nature cannot be proved by mathematical certainty.”

The judge also said jurors should convict if they had “an abiding conviction as to the guilt of the defendant.”

Defense lawyers included accounts of comments made by several jurors to news organizations that the defense said showed jurors improperly “filled in gaps” in the government’s case. In one instance, a juror said he had voted to convict despite having “certain doubts.” In another, a juror said it was difficult to gauge Quattrone’s state of mind when he sent the e-mail.