Alabama: Two key lawmakers out for gambling retrial

Two key lawmakers out for gambling retrial
By PHILLIP RAWLS
Associated Press

MONTGOMERY — Defense attorneys in Alabama’s gambling corruption trial said prosecutors have told them that their witnesses for the retrial won’t include two lawmakers who wore wires for the FBI and engaged in a recorded conversation comparing black casino customers to “aborigines.”

Defense attorneys said prosecutors revealed in a recent meeting that they don’t plan to call Republican state Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale and District Judge Benjamin Lewis of Dothan, who was a state representative from Dothan when he helped the FBI.

“They want to limit all the bad stuff that goes along with them,” defense attorney Jim Parkman said Friday.

Laura Sweeney, spokesman for the Justice Department, declined comment.

Beason said prosecutors have not told him anything official. “If I’m called, I will do my duty and help in any way I can,” he said.

Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.

Beason and Lewis cooperated with the FBI in 2009 and 2010 to record conversations with casino owners, gambling proponents and legislators about efforts by gambling interests to pass legislation that would make sure electronic bingo games could continue to operate in Alabama. Federal prosecutors used the recordings to get indictments against two casino owners, four state senators, and several others accusing them of trading votes for the promise of millions in campaign contributions.

One casino owner and his two lobbyists pleaded guilty. But a trial for nine others last summer ended with two acquittals, no convictions and seven defendants facing a retrial because the jury could decide all the charges. That retrial begins Jan. 30 in Montgomery.

In the original trial, when Beason was testifying for the prosecution, defense attorneys presented a transcript of a tape Beason made of himself, Lewis and a third Republican legislator at the Statehouse. They were joking about economic development in predominantly black Greene County and the customers at one of the county’s largest employers, Greenetrack casino in Eutaw.

“That’s y’all’s Indians,” Lewis said.

“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason replied.

Beason later apologized for the remark. But U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who presided over the trial, issued a ruling in October blasting the two. He said their motive for cooperating with the FBI was not to clear up corruption, but to keep a pro-gambling measure off the November 2010 ballot because they thought it would bring out more black voters and hurt the Republican Party’s chances of winning a majority in the Legislature.

The pro-gambling legislation died after the FBI announced its investigation in April 2010. That kept it off the November 2010 ballot, and the GOP won control of the Legislature for the first time in 136 years.

In Thompson’s ruling, he said Beason and Lewis “lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent,” but he also ruled they could testify at the retrial.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors will try to use FBI agents who worked on the wiretaps as witnesses so they can introduce the tape recordings without calling Beason and Lewis as witnesses, but they will object to that.

Parkman, who represents independent Sen. Harri Anne Smith of Slocomb, said defense attorneys may call Beason and Lewis as witnesses if prosecutors don’t. “We still want to get in conversations about their motives,” he said.

David McKnight, attorney for casino lobbyist Tom Coker, said prosecutors could change their minds about calling Beason and Lewis as witnesses, but it would be highly unusual after telling the trial judge that the two officials won’t be witnesses.

One of the defendants acquitted in the original trial, Democratic Sen. Quinton Ross of Montgomery, said the prosecution is trying to clean up a flawed case by keeping Beason and Lewis off the witness stand. “It’s time for the prosecution to admit the political motivations that have driven this trial from the start,” he said Friday.

A third legislator who helped the FBI, Republican Rep. Barry Mask of Wetumpka, also testified in the first trial. He said Friday prosecutors have told him to be on standby for the retrial. He said he does not know if he will be called to testify because the jury in the original trial returned not guilty verdicts on some of the charges where he was a major witness.

In addition to Smith and Coker, the defendants for the retrial are VictoryLand casino owner Milton McGregor, former state Sens. Larry Means and Jim Preuitt, former casino spokesman Jay Walker, and former legislative employee Ray Crosby.