Throughout the week over at Securities Docket I highlight the most interesting columns and blog posts from around the web on the subjects of SEC enforcement and securities litigation. Here is a digest of my picks for the week ending August 2, 2013.

In Complex Trading Case, Jurors Focused on Greed

Susanne Craig, Ben Protess and Alexandra Stevenson, DealBook

Interviews with five of the nine jurors, an eclectic group spread across Westchester County, Manhattan and the Bronx, pulled back a curtain on the private deliberations in the S.E.C.'s most prominent trial stemming from the financial crisis. The jurors, speaking from their homes and offices a day after the trial, described the genesis of their decision.

They expressed sympathy for Mr. Tourre, alternately calling him a “scapegoat” and a “willing participant” in Goldman's vast mortgage machine.

But ultimately, the jurors said, their decision came down to what they saw as the letter of the law and, for some, a broader concern that Mr. Tourre's actions underscored a fundamental problem with society: Wall Street greed.

A Plant Grows In Brooklyn: EDNY Judge Scrutinizes Deferred Prosecution Deal

Jonathan Sack, Forbes' The Insider

The approach taken to DPAs by Judges Gleeson and Boyle should, at a minimum, lead the government and defense counsel to be prepared to justify their agreement if questioned by a court.  Further, the scrutiny of DPAs could encourage the government to enter non-prosecution agreements (NPAs) in lieu of DPAs, for, as Judge Gleeson observed, judicial supervision does not apply to non-prosecution agreements;  the government has virtually unfettered discretion to choose not to charge at all.  What we can say, for sure, is that the government and a corporate defendant can no longer safely take a lack of judicial scrutiny for granted.

Hedge funds after SAC: Edge fund

The Economist

Four-letter words are no rarity on trading floors. Few are likely to cause greater alarm nowadays than “edge”, the term for one investor's nebulous advantage over others. In America authorities seem to have concluded that “edge” is little more than a euphemism for insider trading. On July 25th a slew of American federal agencies backed a criminal case against SAC Capital, a hedge-fund behemoth they have long suspected of profiting from dodgy information. The now-dirty word features 14 times in their indictment.

SAC on the Chopping Block: Cui Bono?

Holman W. Jenkins Jr., The Wall Street Journal

Under standard rhetoric, the public is somehow cheated by [insider trading], but the standard rhetoric is nonsense. The public isn't damaged because another party wants to sell or buy (and most hedge funds strive to make sure their trading doesn't affect prices anyway). But a cynic might note one thing: Insider-trading law provides a bottomless reservoir of financial “crime” for Washington to investigate whenever it needs a Wall Street prosecution to flounce in front of the press.

In Defense of the Revolving Door

Ray Hennessey, Terra USA

Truth be told, Khuzami was actually innovative at the SEC. He restructured the enforcement division, with a clearer focus on targets and a better use of its small resources. Those were the kinds of things that caught the private-sector's eye — probably because he learned resource maximization and efficiency in the private sector to begin with.

If he had been a career bureaucrat, as some of the revolving-door critics would hope, he would be of little use to the outside world….

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