Just 18 months ago, allegations of corporate crimes at Tyco International Inc., Qwest Communications Inc., Adelphia Communications Corp. and Imclone Systems had people screaming for justice and stock prices plummeting.

But as the cases — including one starring America's most celebrated hostess Martha Stewart — work their way through highly visible trials, some economists say investors would rather look the other way.

"It's my sense the market is not paying too close of attention to these trials," said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist with Standard Federal Bank in Chicago.

Investors such as Roger Hurst of Madison Heights agree.

"I'm getting bored with them," said Hurst, a sales representative who invests in stocks. "I could care less about Martha Stewart or that Tyco guy."

So what's behind this sudden disinterest in corporate crime?

Tannenbaum speculates that investors, content with their growing stock portfolios, say " 'Just give me my 20 percent returns. I don't want to know how you got them.'

"But my feeling is that ethics are not something that should fluctuate with the stock market. They are something that should be constant throughout time," he said.

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing above the 10,600 mark Wednesday, it's true that many investors' stock portfolios are healthier now than they were when corporate scandals involving the likes of Stewart, Tyco and Enron Corp. surfaced in 2001 and 2002.

Scandals hit in hard times

By July 2002, when corporate crimes were dominating the headlines, the Dow traded as low as 7,702.34. It later slipped as low as 7,524.06 in March 2003. Investors who had bragged about their bursting, tech-heavy stock portfolios in the late 1990s were reeling from enormous losses.

Tannenbaum contends these investors were eager to blame someone. They couldn't accept the fact that markets naturally have their ups and downs. Even harder to swallow was the fact that some had recklessly invested in risky dot-coms, he said.

"The thirst for retribution was very high," Tannenbaum said.

Stewart was accused of misleading investigators and shareholders in her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, about her sale of $228,000 in ImClone stock just before regulators rejected the biotechnology company's cancer drug and the stock plunged.

Then in summer 2002 the public watched Adelphia cable company founder John Rigas and his two sons get handcuffed and arrested on charges of looting their company.

Executives at Qwest, a Denver-based phone company, were accused of improperly logging millions in revenue and Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski was accused of throwing his wife a $1 million birthday party in Italy on the company bill as well as helping to steal more than $600 million from the conglomerate.

All have pleaded not guilty.

Outrage dies in good times

Now five of these cases are in the courts. Jurors might begin deliberating Stewart's fate by Wednesday. The Tyco trial is in its fifth month.

Meanwhile, four former Qwest employees went to trial Monday on fraud charges, while jury selection continued in the Adelphia case.

While the public might still be fascinated with the prospect of these executives going to jail, the public outrage of two years ago has simmered down, Tannenbaum said.

"Call me a cynic, but I have lost respect for the investment community over the past year," he writes in a recent newsletter. "Its zeal over financial ethics seems to be inversely related to stock market performance."

Even the companies directly involved in the trials appear to be avoiding investor backlash lately. Most of their stock prices took their hits when news of the scandals broke.

"If it's in the newspaper, it's in the price," Schwartz said. He added in most cases the outcomes of the trials probably won't affect the companies' stock prices further.

"Whether Kozlowski goes to jail or not is not relevant to the investment merits of Tyco today," he said, considering the company is under new management.

The one exception to this rule could be Stewart's trial.