Alabama: Can Gilley Be believed?

Can Gilley Be believed?

If he hadn’t realized it before now, casino developer Ronnie Gilley learned this week that messing around in Montgomery is no joke.

In his sixth day on the witness stand in the gambling corruption trial that has transfixed Alabama’s capital this summer, Gilley sweated through a grueling cross-examination in which he claimed to have no head for numbers and showed he apparently has no sense of right and wrong.

Under questioning by the defense attorney for Sen. Harri Anne Smith, Gilley admitted that he had bragged of raising $250,000 for Smith at a concert when the real figure was closer to $7,000. Although he had testified earlier that he paid two singers $60,000 to appear at the fundraiser for Smith, he admitted in court on Thursday that he’d paid the musicians only $40,000. And his plan, caught on tape, to bring country music star George Jones to Sen. Jim Preuitt’s car dealership and buy a fleet of trucks to help in Preuitt’s re-election campaign?

“The George Jones scenario was a joke,” Gilley testified.

A joke!

Not funny.

Gilley has already pleaded guilty to the charges against him, and his sentence likely will hinge at least in part on the extent of his cooperation in the prosecution of the other defendants.

Cooperation, however, does not mean changing his story with every telling or inflating the amounts of the bribes he claims to have offered legislators in exchange for their votes. Gilley has told so many different versions of his involvement that jurors will have difficulty believing anything he’s said.

Peoples’ reputations already have been destroyed by Gilley’s pranks, and now their freedom is at stake.

If it isn’t already clear to him after Thursday, here’s the straight dope: Gilley needs to stop joking around and tell the unadulterated truth.

In his sixth day on the witness stand in the gambling corruption trial that has transfixed Alabama’s capital this summer, Gilley sweated through a grueling cross-examination in which he claimed to have no head for numbers and showed he apparently has no sense of right and wrong.

Under questioning by the defense attorney for Sen. Harri Anne Smith, Gilley admitted that he had bragged of raising $250,000 for Smith at a concert when the real figure was closer to $7,000. Although he had testified earlier that he paid two singers $60,000 to appear at the fundraiser for Smith, he admitted in court on Thursday that he’d paid the musicians only $40,000. And his plan, caught on tape, to bring country music star George Jones to Sen. Jim Preuitt’s car dealership and buy a fleet of trucks to help in Preuitt’s re-election campaign?

“The George Jones scenario was a joke,” Gilley testified.

A joke!

Not funny.

Gilley has already pleaded guilty to the charges against him, and his sentence likely will hinge at least in part on the extent of his cooperation in the prosecution of the other defendants.

Cooperation, however, does not mean changing his story with every telling or inflating the amounts of the bribes he claims to have offered legislators in exchange for their votes. Gilley has told so many different versions of his involvement that jurors will have difficulty believing anything he’s said.

Peoples’ reputations already have been destroyed by Gilley’s pranks, and now their freedom is at stake.

If it isn’t already clear to him after Thursday, here’s the straight dope: Gilley needs to stop joking around and tell the unadulterated truth.