CFO Grilled at Scrushy Trial

Lawyers for Richard Scrushy hammered at the testimony of the fifth former finance chief to take the stand against the fired HealthSouth Corp. chief executive Monday after the judge excused a sick juror.

Resuming testimony after a weeklong break, defense attorney Jim Parkman challenged former HealthSouth CFO Weston Smith on the dates of meetings and whether he really cried during earlier testimony about a massive accounting fraud.

“There weren’t any tears coming out of your eyes, were there?” Parkman asked accusingly, implying that Smith was faking emotion to build sympathy with jurors.

“That is absolutely incorrect,” said Smith, one of 15 former HealthSouth executives to plead guilty in a conspiracy to inflate earnings.

Parkman also suggested that Smith turned against Scrushy to save his wife, Susan Smith, who was a senior vice president of finance at HealthSouth. Testimony has indicated she may have met with people involved in the fraud but was not charged in the scheme.

Smith denied that his wife was involved in the scheme, but he acknowledged that she provided financial information to people who were in on the conspiracy. Smith denied discussing the fraud with his wife and said his testimony against Scrushy had “nothing to do with her.”

Trying to damage Smith’s credibility, Parkman pointed out that Smith invoked his 5th-Amendment right against self-incrimination 86 times during a hearing in 2003 to determine whether Scrushy’s assets should be frozen. During the same hearing, Scrushy invoked the same right more than 50 times when he was asked to testify.

The trial continued with 17 members on the jury panel after U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre excused a member who was too sick to remain. The trial was delayed last week because the person was sick.

Prosecutors argue that Scrushy directed a scheme to overstate earnings by $2.7 billion.

The defense claims that subordinates committed the fraud on their own and lied to Scrushy to keep it secret.