Legal News

In Jefferson Case, Feds Starting Trial Down a Witness

By Ashby Jones

Let’s end the day by checking back in with the William Jefferson trial.

Earlier, courtesy of the WSJ’s Dionne Searcey, we blogged about the prosecution’s opening statements. Federal prosecutor Mark Lytle summed up the government’s case: that Jefferson used his office to carry out bribery schemes intended to financially benefit his family members.

But then defense lawyer Robert Trout took the stage. According to Searcey’s latest dispatch, he opened up to the jury by saying that given all the buzz about the freezer-stashed cash he was inclined to make a joke about cold cuts or frozen assets.

“Let me start with the elephant in the room,” he said calmly. “The money in the freezer.” He then explained that the money was part of an overly aggressive FBI sting and that it was found in his freezer, rather than in the home of the Nigerian vice president, was evidence that Jefferson did not pay any bribes. Trout said his client stored the money in the freezer so his housekeeper or an intruder wouldn’t find it as he was about to go away for a month.

That said, reports Searcey, Trout didn’t say what Jefferson had intended to do with the money.

Trout went on to explain that while his client's actions may have been unethical, they weren't criminal. He called the government's case a lie, prompted by an FBI sting that "set out to bag a congressman."

"They jumped to conclusions and decided to try to create a case of corruption," Trout told jurors. "They wrote the script. They directed the action."

Something Trout didn’t tell the jury: that last week the defense got a shot in the arm when the government’s star witness, Virginia investor Lori Mody, wouldn't testify. Mody, who was financing the Nigerian telecommunications project at issue in the case, approached the FBI in 2005, helped investigators secretly record her conversations with Jefferson and gave him the marked bills that wound up in his freezer.

Why isn’t Mody testifying? It’s unclear. The possibilities, at least those teed up in this New Orleans Times-Picayune column, by Stephanie Grace, are certainly provocative:

One is that Mody balked at subjecting herself to a defense plan, clearly telegraphed in pre-trial filings, to focus on her history of mental illness and an overdeveloped taste for intrigue. A second is that Lytle’s team simply decided she’d make a terrible witness.

Still, writes Grace, the prosecution still has another potentially devastating witness:

Vernon Jackson, the businessman who has pleaded guilty and has been waiting in prison to testify against Jefferson. Jackson is expected to describe the ex-congressman as an admired friend who demanded payment for his help in securing overseas contracts, then tried to squeeze him out of his own business.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).