Delay sought in bingo corruption trial

Country Crossing owner Ronnie Gilley seeks delay in bingo corruption trial

Lawyers for Country Crossing owner Ronnie Gilley asked to delay his trial on vote-buying charges, citing a need for more time to analyze thousands of secretly recorded telephone calls.

Gilley is seeking to move the trial from April 4 to Sept. 19.
Defense lawyer Doug Jones wrote in a motion filed this week that the prosecutors have so far turned over recordings of 2,700 "pertinent" phone calls secretly taped by the FBI and nearly 200,000 pages of documents. Additionally, Jones said the discovery process had been riddled with problems.

"Given the volume of material, however, it would candidly take a herculean effort to adequately review the materials in order to meet the December 30th motions/defense discovery deadline and the April 4, 2011 trial date. To do so, given the problems and delays associated with the government's discovery is simply impossible," Jones wrote.

U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson gave federal prosecutors until Dec. 9 to file a response.

Gilley and 10 others were arrested last month on charges accusing them of trying to buy and sell votes for a gambling bill before legislators this past spring.

Prosecutors allege legislators were offered generous campaign contributions and other things of value in exchange for yes votes on a bill that would have allowed Gilley, VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor and a few other casino operators to offer electronic bingo machines.

The Alabama Bingo Files