...Five consecutive HealthSouth chief financial officers admitted to cooking the books and copped a plea. They all fingered Scrushy. But jurors chose to believe that the man on top knew nothing about what was going on directly below him.

That kind of ignorance doesn't come cheap. No one denies there was massive fraud at HealthSouth. The government estimates that Scrushy made almost $300 million from the alleged fraud, and he'll get to keep it minus lawyer's fees.

...When Scrushy was indicted, he hired God. Less inspired defendants might have settled for the late Johnnie Cochran or Jack Abramoff. Scrushy, though, went straight to the top.

He left his suburban evangelical church and joined a predominantly black congregation in a blue-collar neighborhood. He bought a half-hour of local TV for a morning prayer show featuring himself and his wife, and frequent guest spots by black ministers. He had a prayer group praying for him every day at the trial. All this was in Birmingham, Ala., where HealthSouth was located and where the trial occurred.