The jury in the insider trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam has begun its deliberations on Monday after.doc

The jury in the insider trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam has begun its deliberations on Monday after eight weeks of hearing witnesses, listening to recorded telephone conversations and reviewing e-mail messages, charts, stock analyst reports and even PowerPoint slides. Its decision comes down to answering a deceptively simple question: Has the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Rajaratnam traded on material nonpublic information dispensed to him by tippers in breach of their fiduciary duty? Closing arguments by the federal prosecutors and the lead defense lawyer, John Dowd, agreed on one point, at least — that Mr. Rajaratnam received information from various people inside companies. That which would have been difficult for the defense to deny after listening to the wiretaps and hearing the testimony of cooperating witnesses. The prosecution case centers largely on the whether the information he received played a role in trading decisions at the Galleon Group, the hedge fund he co-founded. According to prosecutors, the tips provided by insiders gave him a crucial leg up over other investors, resulting in $63 million in gains and avoided losses by turning market speculation into fact. The defense asserted that the information was of little consequence given the volume of other data available in the marketplace that already foreshadowed the corporate developments described by the tippers. Mr. Dowd, in a wan nod to the defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran, told the jury how to view the information passed to Mr. Rajaratnam: “And if it’s public, you must acquit.” That is not really the case, however, because the standard is whether the information received was “material,” which means whether a reasonable investor would consider it important in deciding to invest, and not just that there was public discussion of the possibility. The focus of the defense was to raise enough questions about the importance of what Mr. Rajaratnam received that there could be a rea