Orange County Register

Nicholas

UPDATED with news on trial schedule.

A federal judge said he will delay the trial of billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III until February 2010, after a trial for his co-defendant, William Ruehle, the former chief financial officer at Broadcom Corp.

They were indicted in June 2008 and originally scheduled to go on trial in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana this coming April 7.

Ruehle and Nicholas have pleaded not guilty to 21 felony counts of accounting and securities fraud stemming from allegations they conspired to misreport $2.2 billion in Broadcom’s employee stock options.

Nicholas was Broadcom’s chief executive officer until 2003. Ruehle left the Irvine chipmaking company in 2006, when Broadcom was investigating the stock options scheme.

U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney said from the bench that he wanted Ruehle’s trial to begin October 20 to be followed by Nicholas’ trial, granting Nicholas’ motion to be tried separately. Carney said he expects each trial to take about two months.

Much of the discussion focused on how the two defendants would use a self-incriminating e-mail Nicholas wrote in 2002 describing how his drug abuse left him “not fully functioning” while he headed Broadcom. An appeals court ruled that Nicholas could keep the e-mail out of his trial, because it was a privileged communication between spouses. Nicholas and his wife Stacey divorced in 2008.

But Carney ruled that Ruehle could use the e-mail in his defense, which Ruehle’s attorney said in a court filing that he intends to do.

Carney had originally proposed to start Ruehle’s in July, but Ruehle’s attorney, Richard Marmaro, said he needs until October to prepare his defense to make it “a fair fight,” citing millions of pages of documents he needs to review.

“The key to the defense may be in one of those pages,” Marmaro said. “It would be malpractice not to look at every one of those pages.”

Carney said Nicholas’ trial should start at least a month after Ruehle’s trial ends.

Related stories …

• Billionaire accuses ex-wife of “publicity stunt” to get money
• Broadcom billionaire loses fight to keep e-mail on drug use secret
• Broadcom ex-execs’ defense split over incriminating e-mail
• Ex-Broadcom CEO: Drugs meant he was ‘not fully functioning’
• Billionaire who built Broadcom led a secret life, accusers say

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