A New York judge on Friday said he will delay until at least next month a decision on a retrial date for two former Tyco International Ltd. executives whose first prosecution on corporate corruption charges ended in mistrial.
At a brief hearing, state Supreme Court Judge Michael Obus heard an array of new trial date requests from prosecutors and defense attorneys for former Tyco chief Dennis Kozlowski and ex-finance chief Mark Swartz.
Prosecutors want the new trial to begin in September after the Labor Day holiday, while attorneys for Kozlowski want the trial to begin after Jan. 1, 2005 and Swartz's attorneys want it to begin next spring.
The judge set June 11 as a new date for the attorneys to discuss the timing of a retrial.
The two men's first, six-month-long trial ended on April 2 when the judge declared a mistrial, citing "outside pressure" on an apparent holdout juror who received an upsetting letter.
Kozlowski and Swartz are accused of looting the conglomerate of $600 million in one of the biggest corporate corruption cases in U.S. history.
The first trial, considered a pivotal prosecution in the wake of other U.S. corporate scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, is thought to have cost the state as much as $6 million and the defendants just as much.
