Hynix Semiconductor Senior Vice President Gary Swanson has won a mistrial in the first round of prosecution in a U.S. probe of a global conspiracy to drive up semiconductor prices in 2000 and 2001.

Swanson will be retried in April if the U.S. wants again to pursue charges of fixing prices of memory chips, U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco said Thursday (U.S. time) after declaring a mistrial. Nine jurors told her further deliberations wouldn't  yield a verdict. "The defense is disappointed there wasn't an acquittal", Swanson's lawyer, Robert Bunzel, said in an interview. "Mr. Swanson was expecting an acquittal and so were his lawyers."

Swanson was the first executive to face trial in a six-year-old investigation of a conspiracy by semiconductor companies to fix prices for dynamic random-access memory, the main memory chip in personal computers, laptops and other electronics.

Swanson, 52, head of sales for Hynix's U.S. unit based in San Jose, California, was charged in 2006 with participating in the scheme. Hynix, the world's second-largest maker of memory chips after Samsung Group, pleaded guilty to price-fixing claims and was ordered to pay a $185 million fine in May 2005.
Samsung and two other firms also have been charged, at least 16 people have pleaded guilty and the government has levied $731 million in fines as part of the probe.

Government lawyers claimed Swanson agreed to fix prices with his counterpart at Micron Technology Incorporated, the biggest U.S. maker of memory chips.

By: Docmemory
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