Scott Horton, legal-affairs contributor at Harper's, says the Alabama bingo case is the DOJ's "highest-profile political litigation since its botched prosecution of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens." How bad does the Obama DOJ look in all of this? Horton lays it out in a piece titled "Justice Department Rolls Snake Eyes in Alabama Gambling Trial." Writes Horton:
The prosecution showed Justice to be firmly aligned with Alabama's then-governor, Republican Bob Riley, who had leveled the initial vote-buying accusations during a heated election-time political debate over gambling issues. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer touted the case against the Alabama politicians as "astonishing" when he announced the arrests. The jury, however, turned out to be quite unimpressed with the evidence offered.
How unimpressed were the jurors? Teresa Tolbert (photo, above), a rural mail carrier who spent 10 weeks serving on the bingo jury, said it would have been hard for jurors to be more unimpressed:
In a phone interview with The Associated Press, Teresa Tolbert said she was among those favoring acquittal on all charges. She said federal prosecutor Justin Shur told the jury in his opening statement that wiretapped phone calls and secretly recorded meetings would tell a story of greed and corruption at the Alabama Legislature, but the tapes never lived up to his billing.
"From the very beginning when we were listening to the tapes, I was like, 'Surely this can't be all they have.' I kept waiting and waiting," she said.
Prosecution witnesses were almost as ineffective as the tapes, Tolbert said, and she predicted it would be difficult to get a conviction in a retrial:
(Tolbert) said three people who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution -- Country Crossing casino developer Ronnie Gilley and his lobbyists, Jarrod Massey and Jennifer Pouncy -- lacked credibility. Gilley and Massey came across as arrogant rather than repentant about their admitted law breaking, she said.
She recalled one moment in Gilley's testimony that damaged his credibility.
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