I have put up another chart. This one goes through the indictment and reviews the case so far. The prosecution has laid out their case, except the Jimmy Allen/Mac Roberts piece is still ongoing, and the Jimmy Allen/Mac Marcato piece is yet to be heard. As the chart reveals, there is a lot riding on the jury believing in the “agreement” Nick Bailey and Lanny Young said they had with Paul Hamrick and Don Siegelman. And as I wrote on Friday, the believability of the Mac Roberts components could do a lot to bolster the Bailey/Young story by convincing the jury that bad acts took place, and that the defendants must’ve done the other alleged acts as well. This scenario is possible, in part, because although he had an immunity deal, Jimmy Allen and the other ALDOT witnesses do not have the obvious credibility problem that Young and Bailey had. Because of the overall weakness of the Bailey/Young/Scrushy components, I still believe this is a long shot but it is within the realm of possibility. And it is likely that the prosecutors, the people actually paid to make these kinds of observations, realize it as well; so look for a fast and furious piling-on in the last days of their case, as they disparately try to make their final component, the Mac Roberts situation, the strongest piece of their case. Jimmy Allen was not a great witness for them, so it certainly hasn’t happened yet, but we’ll see what develops.
The link to the chart is here.
For those who are keeping score, I have also updated the witness list (I try to do it at least every couple days). There have been 37 witnesses put on the stand by the prosecution. The link to the witness list is here. Two issues that I believe are both very interesting about this story and are underreported, that I’ll be writing about over the next couple of days, with some updates spanning the next week or so, are the jury challenge and the chances of the upcoming motions to dismiss having any possibility of success. There are many sub-issues about this story that I find interesting and are very worth exploring, and although it is sometimes hard to both cover what is happening every day while simultaneously writing about these peripheral issues, I plan to explore each and every one of them. As always, stick around and we’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. Regardless of your feelings about the people involved or what is going on in the courthouse, the answers will come, but not necessarily on the greased-up media fast track. Few people will like all of the answers we’ll find while most people will like some of them, but I guarantee that beyond all the voices and the chatter and the murk and the spin, they’re there. And we’ll find them.
[Happy Birthday Monique]