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Curllin's Former Owners Retrial Starts Tomorrow

The retrial of the two lawyers Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion, who are the former owners of Horse of the Year Curlin begins tomorrow in US District Court in Frankfort, Kentucky. The two disbarred lawyers are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and eight counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud in charges arising out of their alleged taking of $94.6 million from clients in the fen-phen diet drug cases. Their allegations in the new trial are largely the same as those of their first trial which ended in a hung jury last July. However, the government has added eight new counts in an attempt to make it easier for the jury to reach a conviction.

This time there is a new judge and the defendants are out of jail, free on bond. In the meantime, the two have been disbarred. The prosecutors would like to use the testimony in the disbarment proceedings in this trial and are looking into its admissibility. Those proceedings are usually confidential but I would think that they would be admissible in court.

While I found it hard to believe that a jury had difficult getting to a conviction last time, I did not watch the trial so I couldn't really comment. Supposedly, the presentation of the prosecution case was not the best and the jury had little room to compromise. The judge was overtly favorable to the prosecutors and that too may have influenced the jury. With the addition of eight new counts, the jury may be able to pick a few to convict on while acquitting on others. It's not supposed to happen that way, but we all know that sometimes it does as the natural order of things. With the opportunity to have seen the defense's case and thus being better prepared, I expect the prosecutors to have a better time this trial and I expect a conviction on at least some counts, with serious jail time ahead.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on February 16, 2009 (boomark / email).