In the end, what swayed the jury in the Raj Rajaratnam case? Some of the jurors are opening up to the media, and the portrait is quite interesting. As prosecutors and defense attorneys know well, everything counts--appearance, demeanor, good looks, luck, politeness, haughtiness, height and of course the evidence.

One juror tells the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that the female jurors noted how good looking the prosecution attorneys were and how "tired" one defense attorney looked.

But in the end, we can all take heart in the fact that what mattered most was the evidence.

The jury appears to have done a thorough job sifting through it all. While much of the media discussion has been on wiretaps, the juror took pains to note that all of the evidence counted. While the tapes were convincing to some degree, they also looked at emails, graphs, direct testimony and tried to sort it all out with sticky notes and colored markers to reconstruct the timeline around certain trades.

The jury was apparently powerfully swayed by the government's witnesses, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, as well as Rajiv Goel, Anil Kumar and Adam Smith--despite attacks on the latter three's credibility.

In hindsight, the prosecution put on a textbook winning case, apparently doing everything right.

For more:
- here's the New York Times article
- here's the Wall Street Journal article

Related Articles:
Rajaratnam jurors became fast friends
Rajaratnam jury listens to more wiretaps
Rajaratnam trial juror: Unenviable task