All depends on the jury. Witness:
Understatement of the new century. Nobody but the terminally brain-damaged would write a memo: "I'ma gonna steal a billion from this termite mound and nobody can catch me." I think the government has already established that Scrushy gave all his orders orally. Can the jury pick up on this and retain it for the rest of the trial?
Scrushy's lawyers have followed, for the most part, well-worn paths in the defense. First one must create a fiction upon which the whole case rests. In this instance it is the monumental whopper that underlings conspired to wreck HealthSouth and kept King Richard in the dark. This is about as likely as old Uncle Joe Stalin being kept ignorant of the Gulag. But again, is the jury's collective IQ up to snuff? Perhaps the defense team has noted the public's affinity for loopy conspiracy theories and believes the great unwashed are ready to swallow this one.
The one surprise move by Scrushy's lawyers was filing suit against the Birmingham News. Perhaps they're planning to appeal on grounds of can't-getta-fair-trial-with-all-the-publicity. But for now, all they have done is make the News peed-off and determined to redouble its trial century. Nobody but the terminally brain-damaged would write a memo: "I'ma gonna steal a billion from this termite mound and nobody can catch me." I think the government has already established that Scrushy gave all his orders orally. Can the jury pick up on this and retain it for the rest of the trial?
Scrushy's lawyers have followed, for the most part, well-worn paths in the defense. First one must create a fiction upon which the whole case rests. In this instance it is the monumental whopper that underlings conspired to wreck HealthSouth and kept King Richard in the dark. This is about as likely as old Uncle Joe Stalin being kept ignorant of the Gulag. But again, is the jury's collective IQ up to snuff? Perhaps the defense team has noted the public's affinity for loopy conspiracy theories and believes the great unwashed are ready to swallow this one.
The one surprise move by Scrushy's lawyers was filing suit against the Birmingham News. Perhaps they're planning to appeal on grounds of can't-getta-fair-trial-with-all-the-publicity. But for now, all they have done is make the News peed-off and determined to redouble its trial coverage.
