Have you ever been to a college dormitory on move-in or move-out day? All of the excited kids running around, dragging their bags behind them. Everyone saying their hellos and goodbyes. Think about this scene and close your eyes tightly. Now think of all of those wild-eyed kids grown up. And put them in tailored suits and Pradas. You’ve conjured up the end of a long multi-defendant trial. That was the scene at the courthouse today. If you want to take the daydream/nightmare one step further, then imagine half of the kids in black suits. They will be the prosecutors. The others would be in a mixture of tans and grays and lighter colors. It was move-out day for lawyers. Large groups of them swarmed over the red brick courtyard, saying their farewells, shaking hands with one another, exchanging keep-in-touch cards, putting in a few last words about the good fight. Some of the light suits even shook hands with the men (and woman) in black, some talked about cases on the horizons in courtrooms near and far, and others sighed, and spoke of well-deserved R&R, far away from the cries and motions of the marble battlefield. Like some college kids on move-out day, it was goodbye for now, we’ll meet again some day. The four defendants slipped into and through the throng. Along with the United States of America, they hang in the balance above all of the camaraderie.
Continue Reading–228 words [...]
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It’s lunch time at the trial, getting a bite at the snackbar. I often write some of the nightly entries over lunch, if there are early themes, or I may organize some thoughts or ideas for future articles. Today’s agenda was fairly well established over the weekend, to write about the Siegelman-Hamrick case. First from the government’s perspective and then a look at what might be offered by the defense. But as I write these notes, during lunch on day 29, it seems increasingly likely that this prospective timeline is already irrelevant. It is all coming to an end. A veteran of one corporate scandal and two trials, Richard Scrushy has been under indictment for about twenty-nine out of the last thirty-two months; he has spent seven of the last seventeen months of his life at the defense table next to a group of the best friends money can buy. At the pinnacle, he was a darling of the media, especially in Alabama, where his company brought a sense of pride to a state still reeling from it’s central role in the events of the civil rights era along with a role it shared with Mississippi as being poster-child image of the South. In places like the Northeast and California, the images most often associated with the south was guys in white robes and illiteracy and poverty and an agrarian society that never managed to flip the switch and plug into the rest of the country. To be fair, Alabama had quietly built a banking and medical industry, and had begun to make inroads in establishing a manufacturing sector that would make its presence felt in the nation’s shifting industrial landscape. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, it is always easier to see the scars than it is to see the healing. And of course, the scars last longer. And that’s the stage that was set for Scrushy, driven by ambition and an interwoven set of complex psychological forces, he built a healthcare company that became a nationwide force with global visions. By the late 90s, Richard M. Scrushy was considered an innovator, he was considered a leader, he was considered an important philanthropist, he was considered a genius (as he would often be called, from the witness stand in Birmingham). Years before Richard Scrushy would strive to build a global ministry, there was talk of him using his economic muscle to bring a major sports franchise to Birmingham, there was talk of a Senator Scrushy or a Governor Scrushy, there was talk of spin-off empires, or a record production company. Before the whole thing came crashing down, the guy who was once symbolic of a new found pride in Alabama, a guy who would put a face and a certain energy on the old concept of the New South, would go from being the most meteoric figure in the state to a polarizing flame-out, sitting next to counsel, at the table for the defense. |
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