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.
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The morning of the last day (almost) begins on a clear, blue cloudless Montgomery morning. An attorney might call this crystal clear. There are a few people gathered in the courtyard, waiting for the building to open. It was in a Montgomery courthouse that Judge Frank Johnson once presided over many defendants. Now it’s Richard Scrushy. Now it’s Governor Don Siegelman. Now it is Mac Roberts. Now it’s Paul Hamrick. As big as these names once were in the turn-of-the-century Alabama landscape of business and politics, they’ll be forgotten even if what happens here, in this courthouse, may not be. Sitting on the edge of the red brick plaza, I can’t feel or hear or see the names that have been here, the people who have traveled through the legal system over all the years before. But as an American, as a representative of the public, as a human, what happens here will be remembered and felt long after the names and faces are forgotten. Trial By Charting: Art Leach has filed both oral and written motions to prevent the prosecution, specifically AUSA Stephen Feaga, from incessantly and habitually making charts out of the entire trial. The method was used by both sides, sparingly but effectively, in Scrushy’s Birmingham trial. But in the Siegelman trial, it became kind of an ingrained omnipresent rendition of an available tool taken to the very limits of the absurd. On the way to getting out of hand, there are several reasons why a legal team would want to or not want to conduct a trial-by-charting. |
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