Month: April 2007

Categories
Opinion

Miami Vice

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happened in Miami in 2004 during three days and nights of partying involving John Ford, an undercover FBI agent, and their dates was courtroom fodder this week in Ford’s corruption trial.

Ford’s girlfriend, Mina Nicole Knox, 26, took the witness stand for nearly two hours as the defense closed out its case in short order. Ford did not testify, and the defense presented only three witnesses, including Knox, attorney Allan Wade, and Ford’s friend William Watson.

At Flyer press time, prosecutors were undecided whether to call a rebuttal witness. Otherwise, U.S. district judge Daniel Breen said the two sides would make closing arguments Tuesday afternoon and the case could go to the jury after that. The trial is in its third week.

Knox, who described her relationship with Ford as “personal,” is a petite former model and professional cheerleader and aspiring actress. She answered questions in a sweet, perky voice as defense attorney Michael Scholl and assistant prosecutor Lorraine Craig asked her about details of her weekend with Ford, Tim Willis, and undercover agent L.C. McNeil in Miami in July 2004. The weekend included a party aboard the now famous E-Cycle yacht, which was in fact an FBI prop, where undercover FBI agents smoked cigars, had drinks, and danced salsa with Knox and several of her male and female friends, including Ford.

Under questioning by Scholl, Knox told jurors that McNeil spent the night with one of her girlfriends in a hotel room and a second night with another woman from their party. McNeil testified last week that in his undercover role he “mirrored” Ford’s party style, but he insisted there was no sexual relationship, drug use, or anything “inappropriate” in his role-playing. In real life, McNeil is an ordained minister and specialist in undercover operations who said “it is a challenge to separate the two” lives he leads.

The weekend in Miami is important because it marked the beginning of the buddy-buddy relationship between Ford and McNeil and established the terms by which McNeil would pay Ford $55,000 in what the government says were bribes over the next nine months. Scholl spent more than three days cross-examining McNeil, who made all the payments and recorded them.

When it came his turn to present witnesses, however, Scholl elected to make it short and sweet. Wade, who represents developer Rusty Hyneman, said he never saw Hyneman give Ford an expensive Rolex watch and that Ford did not really save Hyneman any money on a state environmental matter, as Ford boasts on a secret tape. The other witness, a clothing designer who has known Ford for 20 years, also testified about the Rolex.

Then it was Knox’s turn. She said the purpose of the trip to Miami was to attend a black film festival. She did not recall hearing anything about E-Cycle Management. The defense contends Ford was targeted by the FBI and entrapped.

Prosecutors changed tactics by having Craig, instead of assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza, handle the cross-examination. She asked Knox why three versions of the weekend in Miami that she wrote differed in detail, especially about McNeil’s implied romantic involvement. Knox said the first account was written hastily and in broad terms. Her final account of the weekend was written earlier this month just before the trial began. Craig suggested Ford might have coached Knox, but she denied having any help.

Jurors appeared to be listening intently to Knox, in sharp contrast to previous days in which witness testimony dragged on and was often interrupted by private conversations between the judge and lawyers. The courtroom was also unusually crowded with Ford supporters.

After Knox testified, there was a bench conference, after which Breen announced that the proof was complete unless the government decided during the lunch break to produce a rebuttal witness.

The anti-climactic end of the testimony left spectators and reporters guessing about the outcome and offering their opinions about the high and low points of the trial. With Ford declining to take the stand, the role of star witness must fall to either McNeil or undercover informant Tim Willis.

McNeil got the most face time, and the tapes of his payoffs to Ford were devastating, but for my money the trial’s most dramatic testimony came from Willis when he recounted his visit to Ford’s office in February 2005.

Willis was nervous, very nervous.

He had just gotten a call from Ford asking him to come to Ford’s office in downtown Memphis.

The call was short. Ford wanted to talk about one of Willis’ clients. Since Willis had only one client — E-Cycle Management — he could imagine what Ford was going to ask him: Are you working for the FBI?

Say what you will about Willis, he kept Operation Tennessee Waltz alive for three more months until the unveiling of the indictments on May 26, 2005. His commentary from the witness stand on the tape in which Ford threatens to shoot him was the signature moment in the trial.

The meeting at Ford’s office was Willis’ finest hour as an undercover informant. He outfoxed the fox in his own office, nervously shifting a miniature hidden recording device from one pocket to another while making up stories to counter each of Ford’s probes and keeping his nerve when Ford threatened to shoot him if he found out he was being betrayed.

At the time, Tennessee Waltz had been running for 15 months. Ford had been under suspicion since at least April 19, 2004, and had taken $40,000 in payments from an undercover FBI agent. Ford’s Memphis office was on the second floor of a small building on Third Street, with no easy access or interior observation points for FBI agents. Willis was on his own.

“I had a funny feeling about the call,” he testified.

So he called FBI agents Brian Burns and Mark Jackson, who told him to go ahead and to take a recorder with him.

After they talked awhile, Ford got down to business. How well did Willis know L.C. McNeil, the E-Cycle executive who had been paying Ford? What kind of contract did Willis have with E-Cycle? Was it for two years or three years? Where else did the company do business besides Tennessee?

“I’m just trying to figure out why they need a bill,” said Ford.

Then the big question: “Are they legit, man?”

Ford said Roscoe Dixon and two other unidentified people had warned him to be careful. Unknown to Ford, Dixon, hired a month earlier by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton as an administrative assistant, had been secretly taped for more than a year and had already been caught taking bribes from Willis. But Willis did not pay any bribes to Ford and testified that he didn’t even know Ford had been bribed when he went to his office that day.

To each question, Willis made up an answer. E-Cycle, he suggested, was a shell company for a get-rich-quick stock scheme. McNeil and his partner Joe Carson “hated each other,” and McNeil might be trying to sabotage the deal. McNeil grew up on the rough side of Chicago and might have been a drug dealer as a kid.

Ford wasn’t satisfied. The FBI has a lot of shell companies too, he countered.

“Let me ask you,” he said to Willis. “You ain’t workin’ for none of them motherfuckers?”

Ford whispered that he had a gun and said he would use it. Willis, as he had done several times before, broke into nervous laughter.

“He said he would shoot me dead and go tell my wife that I ran off with another woman,” he testified.

Ford was on the right trail but was missing enough pieces that Willis was able to talk his way out of the jam. The truth was worse than Ford suspected. McNeil was an FBI agent and instructor in undercover operations.

“The feds ain’t cut no deal with you?” Ford asked Willis, who had worked in his campaign in 2002.

In fact, that is exactly what they had done. Willis nervously shifted the recorder around in his pockets, sending static through the audiotape played for the jury.

As Willis was leaving, Ford threatened him again, telling him that if he was working for the FBI, “you gonna die right now.” He touched Willis on his shirt — Willis described it as a pat down — to see if he was wired, and Willis lifted up his shirt. As Willis walked down the stairs, Ford said, “It will not ever come back what you and I said.”

Little did he know that Willis would make it all come back. For the next three months, he never met with Ford again without an FBI agent in the room.

“We almost shut down the operation because of the threat,” Jackson testified.

Since he began cooperating with the government in 2003, Willis has been paid approximately $215,000. But on that day in February 2005 in Ford’s office, Willis was worth every dollar the government paid him.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Maholm Sweet Maholm

Paul Maholm — the pride of Germantown High School — hurled a three-hit shutout at the Houston Astros Tuesday night, taking another step toward establishing himself as the ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ rotation.

Read the full story.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens


Mary Winkler, the Selmer woman who will forever after be known as “the preacher’s wife,” is convicted of manslaughter in the death of her husband, who she may — or may not — have shot in the back while he was sleeping. Everyone who supported the battered-wife defense presented by her team of Memphis lawyers rejoiced at the light sentence she will receive — possibly even probation, considering the amount of time she has already served. Meanwhile, husbands across the country are sleeping on their backs and with one eye open.


Children at an Easter egg hunt at Caldwell Elementary School make an unexpected discovery when they stumble upon a dying bat. Authorities mention that the chances of anyone catching rabies from the creature are slim, but unfortunately, your chances of surviving rabies if you catch it are even slimmer. When we were children, we remember being somewhat afraid of the Easter Bunny. An Easter bat sounds much, much worse.


A teenage boy is injured during a fall at an abandoned house in Germantown. Apparently, he was on the roof and tumbled through a skylight. Local police are investigating why he and some friends were on the property. C’mon. That’s a no-brainer. A big, empty, spooky-looking house. A couple of boys. That’s like cheese to a mouse. So to speak.


A Memphis driver tries to run over a policeman who is attempting to issue him a DUI citation. We’ve heard of various clever ways to beat the rap on this charge (why, just a few weeks ago, we told about one woman’s method of eating ravioli before taking a Breathalyzer), but running over a cop is most assuredly not a very good one.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Rogue Justice

Alberto Gonzales and Mike Nifong have much in common.

If I had my way, Alberto Gonzales would have worn a Mike Nifong mask when he testified before the Senate. Nifong is the rogue prosecutor who indicted three members of the Duke University lacrosse team even though he should have known that they were not guilty. He did this not for cash or some other bribe but because of political pressure. He was up for reelection.

It is really no different with Gonzales. By allowing politics to pollute the Justice Department, by permitting U.S. attorneys to get the impression that politics ought to figure in their investigations, he compares to the odious Nifong. The mask will remind the Senate of what really is at stake.

The Durham County district attorney was not, it seemed from his record, a bad guy. But he was confronted with an opportunity. He could indict three privileged white jocks accused of raping an underprivileged black woman, or he could let the case slide, drop it for lack of evidence, and maybe lose the election. We all know what he did.

A different sort of political pressure was being brought by Gonzales and his Justice Department on U.S. attorneys throughout the country. He made sure they all knew their jobs were at stake. All U.S. attorneys are political appointees, confirmed by the Senate and, usually, deemed safe and comfy by the senators from their respective states. Up to this point, the process would make a political boss smile.

But once a U.S. attorney is chosen, the politicking is supposed to cease. This is important, because the office is extremely powerful. Look at what Nifong did to three kids, and he is just a local district attorney. A U.S. attorney usually has vastly more funds at his disposal — and he also has the FBI, the IRS, the Postal Service, the Secret Service, and, for all I know, the CIA and the Mossad. This is not an office to trifle with. It does not take a conviction to ruin a life; a mere investigation will suffice.

So Gonzales is being cute when he said in his prepared statement that he would not “interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain.” But would he, maybe at the instigation of local Republicans, suggest to the U.S. attorneys that they step on the gas a bit when it comes to voter fraud? This was a GOP obsession, and the failure to prosecute for this crime vexed small minds throughout the Republican Party.

What prosecutor could not have gotten that message — especially after eight of their number were purged for what appears to be political reasons? After all, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico was dumped after he received a phone call from one of his senators, Pete Domenici, who appeared to be insisting on the prompt indictment of a Democratic officeholder. Mind you, the Democrat might have been guilty or Domenici might have thought so — still, this was an outrageous interference on Domenici’s part, followed, ominously for other U.S. attorneys, by the dismissal of Iglesias by a compliant attorney general’s office.

Nifong, a weak and contemptible man, was merely trying to hold on to his office. He had the perfect suspects. Their indictment was cheered by a vocal black community, mindless members of the Duke academic community, men-haters across the country, and many Duke students. Whatever reasons Nifong had to suspect rape turned into a huge political opportunity. It must have been hard to back down. He stuck with his case. He neglected his other obligations — to the three young men, above all, but also to the perception that justice in this country is administered fairly.

It is the same with Gonzales. His most solemn obligation was to the sanctity of the country’s criminal justice system and to the belief that politics will not interfere. In that regard, he has failed dismally, overseeing a process for replacing U.S. attorneys that is rank with the rotten smell of petty politics. His victims are not three innocent young men but the trust we all used to have in the impartiality of the Justice Department. He should have worn that Nifong mask. I’m sure it would have fit just fine.

Richard Cohen writes for theWashington Post Writers Group.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Career Choices

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

If your family comes from a country on the Balkan Peninsula, chances are you ate your fair share of baklava when growing up. Paula Pulido did.

Pulido, whose love for baklava was fostered by her Macedonian grandfather, will soon be offering up to everybody in Memphis their own fair share of this traditional Middle Eastern treat when she opens Sweet Desserterie in Cooper-Young this summer.

Pulido was working in pharmaceutical and medical sales before she decided to turn her passion into her profession. “This has been a dream of mine for a long time,” Pulido says. “I felt that Memphis was ready for a dessert restaurant and that it was time for me to open my own place.”

Sweet Desserterie will occupy part of the old flea-market space on Cooper next door to Burke’s Book Store.

The restaurant industry is almost as much a part of Pulido’s heritage as baklava. Her grandfather owned several restaurants in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and her father owned restaurants in Lansing and Detroit before working as a rocket scientist for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama. “My dad enjoyed the restaurant business, but he thought it was too much work. So not too long after he graduated from college, he took the job with NASA,” Pulido says.

Pulido’s kitchen skills are mostly self-taught and come from observing and working alongside family members and studying countless books. Two years ago, she tested the waters by starting the European Oven, a catering business. Around the same time, she took classes at the now-defunct Memphis Culinary Academy and had the chance to talk about her plans with Jose Gutierrez, chef and owner of Encore.

“Talking to Jose has had a great impact on me,” Pulido says. “He never looked down on me, and he had a lot of great advice. I told him once that my baklava was famous around Memphis and that I wanted him to try it,” she recalls. “He said that he had no use for phyllo [dough] in his kitchen. I made him some anyway, and he loved it.”

Pulido describes Sweet Desserterie as a “dessert-centric” restaurant or a European-style dessert bistro. In addition to baklava, it will offer warm fudge truffle cake, brioche bread pudding, crepes with brandied fruit, and freshly baked popovers, plus there will be an espresso bar and desserts to-go. Pulido is also planning to include a “small bite” menu and a full bar with an extensive wine list and martini menu.

Sweet Desserterie, 938 S. Cooper (726-4300) www.sweetdesserterie.com

Dan Levin, a Boston native, moved to Memphis from Atlanta four years ago. The former software engineer liked Memphis so much he decided to start his second career here once he retired.

“I knew I wanted to have my own business and thought a coffee shop would be a great idea,” Levin explains. Because he didn’t want to compete with the established coffee shops in Midtown, Levin started looking west and settled on the space at 153 S. Main that was once occupied by Viking Culinary Institute. He plans to open Blues City Pastry in May.

While Levin has no experience in the restaurant business, his employees do. “I just put an ad in the paper and got lucky,” he says. Teresa “Terry” Denton-Johns, Blues City’s executive pastry chef, has 15 years of experience, working mostly in Las Vegas, including at the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino and the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Also on board is Carol Whitemore, a returning Memphis native who most recently started her own gourmet chocolate business in Walkertown, North Carolina. Whitemore will be responsible for everything chocolate at the pastry shop, from truffles to miniature chocolate pyramids.

Plans for Blues City Pastry include a Memphis-themed menu — “Mississippi Mud Cake” and chocolate Elvises — and guests at the 50-seat coffee shop will be able to watch the pastry chef work behind a glass wall.

The coffee shop will open at 6:30 a.m. during the week, 9 a.m. on Saturdays, and noon on Sundays.

Blues City Pastry, 153 S. Main (576-0010) www.bluescitypastry.com

Together, Jon Sharman and Rodney Bryant have almost 20 years of restaurant experience. After several discussions about their dream restaurant, Sharman and Bryant began to take the idea more seriously last fall. They found a building in Cordova that matched their expectations and went to work. In March, they opened Assaggio, an upscale Italian restaurant at Germantown Parkway and Macon Station. The menu includes saltimbocca, chicken Marsala, Neapolitan pork steak, and a “create your own” pasta option. The wine list offers about 20 choices, and they’ll take requests to stock more wines and liquors.

Assaggio is open for dinner Monday through Friday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 5 to 11 p.m.

Assaggio, 8100 Macon Station (752-0056) www.assaggioonline.com

Categories
Living Spaces Real Estate

In Focus

FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I suspect he never had to remove a stripped bibb seat.

When my wife and I bought our house, we inherited a leaky shower faucet. Moreover, this wasn’t the steady drips of a faucet fudging on the details. This was the insistent flow of an army on the march accompanied by the high-pitch hellhound whine of a valve not tightly stanched somewhere behind the bathroom tile.

After putting it off for four months, I got right on the task of fixing the problem. At all costs, I wanted to avoid paying a plumber to do the fix. So I brushed up on shower-faucet lingo online and ran to my local hardware store to buy a new stem set.

After much experimentation, false starts, and trips back to the hardware store to buy socket wrenches or O-rings, I decided to replace everything, all the way to the bibb seat at the back of the faucet contraption. Of course, for that I needed a bibb-seat tool. Tapering or non-tapering? I made an uneducated guess.

The cold-water-side bibb seat came out like it was greased with honey, but it came out. The hot-water seat, however, felt like it was greased with the Ural Mountains. It was going nowhere, and worse, I was starting to strip the seat’s brass grip with the steel of the seat tool. Things were getting desperate. Every time I tried, I stripped the bibb seat more. I was starting to get the Fear, and it was looking like I needed professional help — at least a plumber for the short-term.

I tried one last time: I hammered the bibb-seat tool in, pushed with all my might, and turned. And the bibb seat came loose.

Twenty minutes later, everything was reassembled and the water turned back on, and the leak could be counted in the past. A week later, a sink faucet began dripping.

To spiders, being abducted by aliens, and the little girl from The Ring: Please add the newest entry on my list of fears — a leaky faucet.

greg@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Living Spaces Real Estate

Before and After

Just as certain as death and taxes, all the new construction going up in Memphis and Shelby County means old buildings are coming down. As buildings are razed, architectural elements, windows, doors, sinks, bathtubs, and anything else inside gets demolished too. Historical and period features can be lost to time in the blink of an eye.

Which is where Memphis Heritage’s Preservation Posse steps in. The group makes it their mission to get into buildings and salvage what they can before demolition. The group works on tips from homeowners and building owners in advance of a demolition or gets donations as renovations are being made and items are removed.

The “sheriff” of the Preservation Posse is David Early. He has worked with Memphis Heritage for about three years, and he can rattle off war stories about warehouse timbers from Number One Beale, a stuffed wildebeest and giraffe from the Pink Palace Museum, the front half of a taxi cab (painted on the side was “Tijuana Taxi”), and following a dump truck taking away the remains of old Baptist Hospital to a landfill to see what he could salvage.

All of the items scavenged and saved are stored until Memphis Heritage’s next Architecture Auction, a major fund-raiser for the group. Memphis Heritage is a nonprofit educational and charitable organization that spearheads the preservation movement to save historically significant Shelby County buildings, open spaces, and neighborhoods.

Early says they’re always seeking volunteers for the Preservation Posse. Sturdy shoes and work clothes are recommended, and water and coffee and gloves and dust masks are provided. “Everybody likes to romp around,” Early says. “It’s fun to poke around basements or closets. We do pry apart things such as molding around doors.” Curiosity and a willingness to get dirty are prized skills for posse members.

“Down the road, we want to have a retail presence,” Early says. Memphis Heritage as a whole is hoping to build on successes, expanding the scope of the organization. “We want to be a grant-giving organization to help if someone has a project and needs some funding,” Early says. “We want to be a catalyst for reuse of a building. We want to not just be an advocate but to bring some money to the table.”

The site of this year’s Architecture Auction, to be held in October, is the Marine Hospital near the National Ornamental Metal Museum. On Saturday, April 28th, volunteers will be sprucing up the space to make it suitable for the auction.

“There’s this underlying need that people have to have a piece of something,” Early says. “If they know the whole thing can’t be saved, they just want a fragment to hang on to. So I was determined to spread some fragments around.”

For more information on the Preservation Posse, other volunteer opportunities with Memphis Heritage, or to make a donation, call 272-2727 or go to MemphisHeritage.org. ■

The Butler Street Bazaar is torn down in anticipation of new townhomes by developer Berry Jones of Architectural CustomWorks. Demolition began on Wednesday, March 28th and continues today.

LivingSpaces@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Blogrolling

Though there are still some local pols who discount the influence of Memphis’ ever-growing blogger community on elections and other circumstances, two active political figures have made it emphatically clear they take the bloggers very seriously indeed.

One was state Senate speaker pro tem Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, who, as noted in a previous column, recently made a point of meeting with several of the more prominent Memphis bloggers to communicate her views about legislative business and to offer her explanation of why she, though a Democrat, had voted back in January to make Republican Ron Ramsey Speaker of the Serat3e.

Now Herman Morris, the former MLGW head who has launched a serious campaign for mayor, acknowledges that he has sounded out the same set of bloggers, most of them on the “progressive” side of the spectrum, about a possible get-together in the near future to discuss the specifics of his campaign.

Gallagher vs. Richardson: The same group of bloggers is also playing a role in the developing special Democratic primary race for the state House District 89 seat recently vacated by Beverly Marrero, now a state senator. Longtime activist David Upton, who managed Marrero’s successful Senate campaign, is now the main sponsor of Jeannie Richardson, one of two Democratic candidates for the District 89 seat.

Circumstances have changed dramatically since last month when, as was reported here, the other candidate, Kevin Gallagher, was estranged from several members of his initial support base, many of them bloggers, for reasons essentially personal.

At the time, it appeared that Richardson would inherit their support. But Gallagher has patiently gone about the business of mending fences, and most of the alienated supporters are back on board — some of them, like Rick Maynard of the Freedonian blog (thefreedonian.blogspot.com), enthusiastically so.

“He’s been very conscientious about addressing all the issues, both personal and political,” said Maynard, who also said that a temporary alliance between himself and other bloggers, on one hand, and Upton on the other, had dissolved.

A conspicuous exception to the rapprochement is Stephen Tapp, whose “Daily Docket” blog (dailydocket.blogspot.com) now features an extensive listing of Richardson’s qualifications as well as posts that are unflattering to Gallagher.

Gallagher, who was campaign manager during Steve Cohen’s successful congressional campaign last year, and Tapp, a longtime friend and supporter of Cohen, had disagreements at the time over campaign strategy.

One of the allegations that Upton and others have made against Gallagher is that, after withdrawing his own candidacy in the state Senate race, he basically had reneged on a pledge to support Marrero’s primary campaign, ultimately successful, against lawyer Robert Spence.

Gallagher has protested that characterization as incorrect. In an e-mail to the Flyer, he said, in part: “Aside [from] withdrawing from the senate race to endorse Senator Marrero, which all but ensured her victory, I also sent out mail pieces to 5,000 voters expressly saying don’t vote for me but for Beverly Marrero.

“I talked to Upton on a daily basis to help with the campaign and was at every event. I also coordinated mailings from other sources as independent expenditures, which, by law, the Marrero campaign could not know about. I still have the invoices that detail my ‘remote’ involvement.”

Upton disputes all that and maintains that he, not Gallagher, paid for the mail piece alluded to, one in which, as indicated, Gallagher, whose name was still on the ballot, disavowed his own candidacy in favor of Marrero’s.

Claiming that he, too, has invoices to prove the point, Upton also denies that Gallagher was much in evidence during the duration of Marrero’s primary campaign or her successful general election race against Republican Larry Parrish.

Another issue in the race could be that of Richardson’s residence. Upton maintains that she has moved from a house she owns on Mud Island, which is out of the district, to an address well within the District 89 lines. Maynard contests that, saying that the Midtown address is a nominal one only, inhabited mainly by a principal in the Richardson campaign with whom Richardson may at times share the space.

A key factor in the race could be the attitude of Representative Cohen, who is considered friendly to both camps. Gallagher expressed confidence that the congressman will issue a formal endorsement before the special May 31st primary date. Richardson’s backers believe that he will stay out of the race.

• A mayoral candidacy may have been launched at Saturday’s first meeting of the venerable Dutch Treat Luncheon to be sponsored by the conservative publication Main Street Journal. But mayor of what?

The declarer, in any case, was first-term county commissioner James Harvey, who, in response to a question about his future political intentions, said he intended to run for mayor. But Harvey discussed the issue in such general terms that it seemed to confuse members of the luncheon audience in Cordova.

Many seemed to think Harvey meant he would run for mayor of Memphis in this year’s city election, but he had previously confided that he is looking at the 2010 county mayor’s race. In the meantime, said Harvey, “I am going to be devoting full attention to my position as county commissioner.”

Harvey is a Democrat. Two Republicans who have been speculated on as potential 2010 mayoral candidates are Trustee Bob Patterson and county commissioner George Flinn, who ran as the Republican nominee for the office in 2002.

Ford Trial: Time Runs Out

A timely new element was introduced in federal court this week as former state senator John Ford’s “Tennessee Waltz” trial on bribery and extortion charges was coming to an end — much sooner than most observers had predicted.

This was the presentation by the prosecution of a $50,000 Rolex watch that the government insists was given to Ford by developer Rusty Hyneman in return for specific legislative favors. It was brought into evidence in Ford’s trial to buttress the government’s claim that it had properly “predicated” Ford as a suspect — i.e., demonstrated his disposition to illegal activity on behalf of the FBI “shell firm” E-Cycle, on whose behalf, the prosecution argues, Ford did legislative favors for $55,000 in payoffs.

When the watch was presented in a preliminary hearing earlier this year, it had somehow lost proper time from the point when it was taken off Ford’s wrist in May 2005 at the time of his arrest in Nashville. That made it a handy trope of sorts for an argument between the two sides Monday over the timing and meaning of conversation and events.

When court adjourned for a lunchtime break, presiding judge Daniel Breen noted that the expensive watch should be secured.

As part of the aftermath to that statement, members of the two teams began engaging in lighthearted banter. For what was almost surely the first time since the trial began on Monday, April 9th, Ford took part in such conversation, trading jokes back and forth with FBI agents Mark Jackson and Brian Burns about the watch.

That bit of activity might or might not have indicated something about subdued levels of tension on Ford’s part. In any case, the prosecution rested its case against Ford shortly after Jackson’s testimony was concluded.

The defense, which had been expected to present a parade of witnesses of its own, closed its case out by lunchtime on Tuesday — having called only three witnesses: attorney Allan Wade and clothing designer William Watson, each of whom testified about details of Ford’s acquisition of the Rolex, and Mina Nicole Knox, a Ford girlfriend.

Knox’s testimony, challenged repeatedly by assistant prosecutor Lorraine Craig, tended to minimize E-Cycle aspects of the relationship between Ford and undercover FBI agent L.C. McNeil and suggested, for whatever it was worth, that the latter may have engaged in more than casual relationships with at least two females during the course of the sting.

With the case apparently headed for closing arguments and imminent consideration by the jury, the defense seems to have believed that the “entrapment” defense, linchpin of its strategy, had been buttressed by this circumstance and by other elements of Ford’s relationship with FBI principals.

After the surprising leniency of the “voluntary manslaughter” verdict given defendant Mary Winkler in the concurrent murder trial in Selmer, it seemed possible that subjective elements could weigh as heavily on this trial’s jurors as they may have in Selmer.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Long Road Home

CREDIT: Benjamin Howell/Dreamstime.com

For the thousands of Katrina evacuees still living in Memphis, hope may be on the horizon. Louisiana’s “Road Home” program — a collection of services charged with spearheading the recovery effort — has set up temporary offices at the Holiday Inn Select on Airways.

As part of the program, a displaced homeowner can receive up to $150,000 to rebuild an existing home, purchase a new home in Louisiana, or relocate out of state. The average dollar amount awarded for each claim is $76,162. In total, the program has $7.8 billion in funds earmarked directly for homeowners.

“The way the program works is there’s a meeting after the application,” says Tiffany Alexander, public information officer with ICF International, the firm overseeing the Road Home program. “We have been asking people to come to Louisiana, but there are so many people applying that we decided to go on the road to help them.”

Applicants can schedule interviews at the Memphis location until April 29th. After the 29th, the Memphis office will be closed.

Critics of the Road Home program have pointed to vast post-interview delays as evidence of an understaffed and overloaded department. They blame bureaucratic red tape and excessive anti-fraud measures for failing to put money in the hands of displaced victims. As reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Louisiana legislature ordered a special panel to investigate ICF’s handling of its contract.

As of April 16th, only 7,800 of the program’s more than 125,000 applicants have received funding.

ICF counters that it is over a year ahead of schedule based on its initial October 2006 contract and that customer surveys reflect that 93 percent of people are very satisfied with the program. They also cite a 15 percent fraudulent claim rate in neighboring Mississippi’s housing program to show that rigorous prevention efforts are necessary “to protect homeowners from fraud and to ensure that those who benefit from the funds are eligible Louisianans.”

Statistics support ICF’s claim that the Road Home process is become more efficient. Of the families that received Road Home funding, more than 6,500 of those awards were given within the last two months, according to a February PBS report.

“The Road Home program represents the largest recovery effort in U.S. history,” says Alexander. “With such a large undertaking, a verification process and safeguards against fraud must be put into place, but every effort is being made to assist homeowners in any way possible. That is one of the reasons we are in cities including Dallas, Atlanta, and Memphis.

“Many Road Home employees are applicants themselves,” she adds. “They are going through the exact same process they are guiding others through.”

Katrina evacuees who would like to apply for Road Home funding or schedule an interview can call 1-888-Road-2-LA or visit www.road2la.org.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Sayles

I know the jury’s still out on this one, but until the entire story is out, I’m giving Alec Baldwin the benefit of the doubt. Sure, it’s not the best idea in the world to call your 11-year-old daughter and leave a message on her voicemail calling her a “filthy pig,” but who really knows why he said that? Who really and truly knows what she did? Maybe she’s a spoiled little brat who acts like trash and stomps her feet when her iPod isn’t working or she can’t find her cell phone or her $300 flip-flops. I’ve known people like that. I’ve dealt with them. The most horrible person I have ever met in my entire life was a little California creature who worked for a movie company and stomped around in her pink miniskirt shouting and screaming at people twice her age. I came very close to calling her a filthy pig. The best part about the whole Alec episode is that, because we live in the United States, it got more attention the day the voicemail was made public than the war in Iraq did. I actually saw a segment on the news with the network’s top legal analyst — no, maybe it was the top Court TV reporter, which is even better — analyzing it like it was a serial killing. He was fervent in his opinion about it. He really thought it was interesting and horrible and he really cared about it. He was nearly foaming at the mouth about it as much as everyone did when Don Imus made his racist remarks. And what a shocker that one was. Don Imus is, was, and always has been simply grotesque and reptilian. I can’t believe people were surprised that he said what he said. And his mock apology was priceless because it was about as sincere as George Bush saying that we are winning the aforementioned war in Iraq. It was almost as good as watching Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez trying to answer questions about the firings of all those U.S. attorneys. Do we really think we’re safe with an attorney general who can’t remember what he did two days ago? We already went down that road with Ronald Reagan and it got us in the Iran-Contra mess. Not to mention a funeral that lasted longer than his presidency. At least the exhaustive coverage of the Alec Baldwin Phone Message took up enough airtime that it ate into (no pun intended) those commercials for the NutriSystem diet plan. You know, the one that comes on every seven seconds, no matter what channel you’re surfing through. The one with the woman who sounds like she’s from Millington and says, “My husband sayad I was haaawt.” I want to kill that woman, along with the one who actually says the words, “I have had this smoking-hot body since I was in college.” They both need to be thrown into a pit full of rabid porcupines, as do the makers of those commercials and the person responsible for having them on the air so often. They are worse than the “apply it directly to your forehead” ads, for which I hope someone went to prison. I say, let Alec Baldwin and Don Imus say whatever they want as long as those commercials continue to be allowed on the air. One minute you’re watching grieving parents and students after the murders at Virginia Tech and if you look away for one second there’s some hick in a bikini talking about how great she looks. Is there no balance in life? Should Alec Baldwin leaving a nasty voicemail message garner more interest from the U.S. mass media than, say, the fact that people are still living in tents almost two years after Hurricane Katrina because we have the most corrupt government and insurance industry in the civilized world? Oh, I forgot: Covering that would mean work and would not include a celebrity, so fuggetabouddit. Maybe if Alec Baldwin decides to go into rehab to keep his career intact, he will do it in Darfur so someone will have to go over there and show us what’s really happening.