It was lobbyist and government witness Joe Cooper who was
“on trial” Wednesday and not bribery defendant Edmund Ford. And by mid-afternoon
he was reduced to tears – and the defense attorney had not even begun his
cross-examination.
Cooper, the star witness against Ford, spent the entire day
in the witness chair. His morning went well enough, with assistant U.S. Attorney
Tom Colthurst taking him through a series of videotapes that Cooper secretly
recorded in 2006. The tapes show Cooper making $8,900 in payments that
prosecutors call bribes to Ford while Ford was a member of the Memphis City
Council. Cooper was representing William Thomas, who wanted approval for a land
project and a billboard on Steve Road at Interstate 240.
Cooper spoke in a loud and confident voice, sometimes
stretching his answers so that Colthurst had to cut him off. The videotapes
showed Cooper, wearing a tiny hidden camera disguised in a buttonhole in his
shirt, carrying on folksy conversations with Ford at the former councilman’s
funeral home and in a car. The meetings began in late August of 2006 and ended
in late November when Ford was arrested and Cooper was relocated to a motel in
Jackson, Tennessee because he feared for his safety.
The afternoon, however, was a different story. When
Colthurst asked Cooper to explain that the FBI gave him $10,000 for living
expenses because he couldn’t get a job, Cooper broke down crying after saying he
and his wife were “about on the street” at one point. A recess was declared.
When the trial resumed, Colthurst quickly finished his
questions and it was defense attorney Michael Scholl’s turn. Scholl bored in on
Cooper’s 1977 federal conviction on bank loan charges and the fact the he served
four months in prison as an indication that Cooper is unreliable and has
incentive to hand Ford over to the government. Then Scholl turned to Cooper’s
guilty plea on money laundering charges in 2007. And for nearly two hours,
Scholl confronted Cooper with all the details of his involvement with drug
dealers. Several times, Cooper’s recollection was shaky and he seemed to back
away from one point in particular – that he thought he was leasing luxury cars
to a young man who was an electrician and in the music business and did not
suspect until months later that he was a drug dealer. Cooper faces a sentence of
30-37 months according to sentencing guidelines.
When Cooper said, “I am here to eliminate a cancer that was
on the City Council,” Scholl shot back, “You probably became the cancer of this
City Council, didn’t you?”
“It takes two to tango, sir,” Cooper replied.
“You like to tango, don’t you,” said Scholl.
Whether the theatrics had any effect on the jury, of
course, is not known. Ford and his wife Myrna are expected to take the stand
later this week, and the government will shift attention away from Cooper and
back to the videotapes that show Cooper carefully counting out stacks of $100
bills and handing them to Ford.
