As we expected, Judge Coleman demanded a jury trial, and we vowed to give him one. There was never, with him, any suggestion of a guilty plea, but he was surprised at how strong our evidence was, especially our supervisor witnesses. My favorites were the two from Monroe County, the skinny and sarcastic Bud Faulkner and the chubby and cheerful John Alan Cockerham. John Alan had invited me to go crappie fishing with him before trial, which I would otherwise have enjoyed, but declined because of how it would have looked. He understood. I still think the offer was genuine and he would not have tried to drown me or influence me, but if someone had seen us or heard about it and he had gotten a light sentence, it would have sounded mighty strange.
My next-to-most favorite moment of the trial was when John Alan was telling where and when Bobby Little handed him bribes. Usually it was at John Alan’s barn or some other isolated location where there would be no witnesses. One day, however, Bobby Little asked John Alan to meet him for lunch at the Shelaine Motel in Aberdeen, which had an excellent buffet and where lawyers often ate for a change from my favorite place, Tony’s Greek restaurant, run by my friend Chris Provious and his wife Frankie. Off premises, Chris and his father Tony made an excellent red wine from Greek grapes in the high-walled courtyard between his restaurant and his home. The fact that Aberdeen was in a dry county always seemed somehow beside the point during our enjoyment of his wine.
The only drawback to the Shelaine restaurant was its men’s room, which was tinier than the restroom in the cheapest French hotel. John Alan testified at trial that Bobby Little was in a hurry one day and insisted that since Bobby “owed” him several hundred dollars in kickbacks, he would just pay him right there, suggesting they step in the men’s room, a big mistake. The two rotund men became stuck in the restroom and had to call the manager to help them get out. Judge Coleman had real trouble doing a serious cross-examination of John Alan while the jury was still laughing about the bathroom incident.
My favorite trial incident involved convicted Pontotoc County supervisor Theron Baldwin whose nickname was Boss Hog because of his striking resemblance to the rotund politician on the Dukes of Hazzard. Baldwin had testified unequivocally to the grand jury about all the bribes Little had paid him over the years, reciting times, places, and exact amounts. He had been a perfect witness. When I called him at trial, however, I thought there was a hint of a smirk on his chubby little face. Then in his late seventies, Baldwin walked arthritically to the witness stand to take the oath. He stated his name clearly enough, but when I asked him about his dealings with Bobby Little, he “spun” me as trial lawyers say. “Mr. Hailman, you probably haven’t heard this. It’s been a long time since that grand jury, and I’ve had a stroke, and it has totally wiped my memory clean. I can’t remember anything about Bobby Little other than that I knew him.”
I looked over at Judge Coleman. He had a twinkle in his eye and a broad smile on his face. I’d been spun this way before by “cooperating” drug case witnesses, but never by a politician. They usually didn’t want people to think their minds were gone. But Mr. Baldwin had retired after his felony conviction, so he no longer cared. I asked him if he remembered testifying before the grand jury, and he said he did. I asked him if he had told the truth. Again he said he did. Seeing where I was going, Judge Coleman rose and objected, arguing loudly that I was picking on this poor old man. But the judge also saw where I was going and overruled him. “So,” I concluded, “You’re telling this jury that everything you told the grand jury back when your mind was still good was absolutely true and correct?” He replied unhesitatingly, “Yes, sir.” I glanced over at Judge Coleman. His head was down. He knew what was coming.
I told Judge Keady we offered in evidence Baldwin’s grand jury testimony as his “past recollection recorded” because in his current mental state, he was now an “unavailable witness.” Judge Keady turned to Judge Coleman and called us up to the bench. “Mr. Coleman (he refused to call him “judge”) do you have any objection?” Judge Coleman responded: “Your Honor, this is unfair. It deprives my client of the right to have me cross-examine this witness. He says he can’t remember, and I can’t cross-examine that stack of paper up there called a transcript.”
Out of the hearing of the jury, Judge Keady then played a little trick on Judge Coleman, saying, “Mr. Coleman, if you were still Judge Coleman, how would you rule?” Judge Coleman said, “I know it’s no use to object since I’ve written opinions myself approving the very thing Mr. Hailman proposes to do. But anyway, for my client’s sake, we do object.” Judge Keady wasted no time. “Overruled. Proceed, Counsel.” We finished the case without further incident, and the jury quickly convicted both Little and his company on all counts. Little was sent to federal prison, where the warden, thinking he was being humane, gave Bobby Little his brother, Thurston, as a cellmate. Within a week, however, they got in a brotherly fistfight and had to be reassigned.
Arguing a case at the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans against its former chief judge sounded like a challenging assignment, especially given some of the strange legal issues we had. To my surprise, the panel brushed them aside, and most of our “argument” was in fact reminiscences by Judge Coleman. The judges sort of took me under their wings as someone faced with the near-impossible task of opposing their former colleague. No way, they seemed to say, was I going to be put at a disadvantage.
Then came a final, unusual challenge. Our case being well known by then in legal circles for its legal questions and its famous defense attorney, the Fifth Circuit Bar Association chose the appeal hearing on our case as the centerpiece of its annual meeting. The large Fifth Circuit en banc courtroom in New Orleans was packed after our argument for a two-hour Q & A by the members of the bar. I feared that they would grill me about my sarcastic “concordance” or Bobby Little’s conspiracy with himself or several other dicey points. I needn’t have worried. Judge Coleman told funny war stories for two hours till our time was up, and I never had to open my mouth to answer a single question. So ended Operation Pretense.
One event several years later brought the case back vividly to mind, however. Long after I’d testified before the Judiciary Committee of the Mississippi Legislature about reforming our supervisor system by introducing a professional countywide administrator, an article appeared in the Oxford Eagle (known to its local foes as the Daily Buzzard). The article asked for bids to build a fancy new Chancery Court building. The winning bidder was a “new” outfit from Alcorn County named NMS. Checking with the Secretary of State’s Office in Jackson, I learned that Bobby Little was its president and only stockholder. Having served his sentence, he had simply reopened his company under its initials, changing North Mississippi Supply to “NMS,” and gone right back to doing business with counties, including ours, right under our noses.
News stories immediately claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks were offered to the owner of the land that was to be the site of the new building. The owner of the land, where the beloved Oxford landmark James Food Center and Deli used to stand, had allegedly refused an NMS bribe, but finally agreed to sell them the land legally anyway and would never admit to us any bribe was ever offered. Paul James was an old friend and very ill, and I didn’t have the heart to lean on him. He died in 2010. The building, however, is quite handsome and a nice addition to the old street named after L. Q. C. Lamar, our local symbol of honorable lawyers, a former Ole Miss law professor and the only Mississippian ever to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Courses in ethics are now often taught in the building as part of our American Inns of Court programs. As always it seems, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Chicken House Caper21
Strange fads sometimes begin at Ole Miss football games and our legendary tailgate parties in the Grove. National sports broadcasters often say that their favorite place in the entire United States for a football game is Oxford, calling it the Little Easy, in favorable comparison to New Orleans’s Big Easy. One beauti
ful fall afternoon was typical, but this time with a twist. The Ole Miss campus, although then legally dry under local law, nonetheless welcomed tailgaters openly lugging ice chests of beer and whiskey into the Grove. Stunningly dressed coeds in short dresses and high heels even carried large purses full of alcohol right into the stadium. Preppy frat boys and their well-dressed fathers carried leather-covered silver hip flasks filled with their favorite whiskey or mixed drink.
But there’s always someone who lacks moderation and does something so outrageous that it gives hypocrisy a bad name. One of those, in Itawamba County east of Tupelo, a dry county, was such a man. He bore the colorful name Dorvin Gober. With his wife, Bertha, and some friends, and with protection from Itawamba sheriff Don Spradling, Gober converted a large, abandoned commercial chicken house half a football field long into a drive-through full-service bar. They might have gotten away with it if they hadn’t overadvertised it, giving away hundreds of colorful T-shirts, with no names or writing on them, just a picture of a big, long chicken house.
As marketing it was brilliant. But for use in an illegal business, it was excessive. Word of the Chicken House spread far and wide. Students from Oxford drove to Itawamba County to load their car trunks with cases of beer and whiskey and, of course, to buy the fast-selling T-shirts. Local residents began to complain, not about the liquor but about the traffic jams. The real problem began when large numbers of Ole Miss and Mississippi State students began showing up at games wearing Chicken House T-shirts. Ole Miss Rebel-flag wavers and State cowbell ringers alike would bring back the T-shirts to their friends. Fraternities began wearing them en masse. The state ABC alcohol-control folks heard about it and launched an undercover investigation.
It is almost impossible to convict an elected sheriff in state court in Mississippi before a jury of his peers who did, after all, elect him. Sheriffs know how much law enforcement constituents want. Those who enforce alcohol or gambling laws too strictly are often not reelected. One told me once “John, I gave them more law enforcement than they wanted.” For that reason, Itawamba DA John Young brought the case to us as a federal bribery case rather than prosecute it himself. The whole thing was a hoot. It was a piece of cake to get the evidence. The defendants sold to everyone. Catching the sheriff was almost as easy. ABC agent Frankie Daniels pretended to be corrupt and agreed to split payoffs from the Chicken House with Sheriff Spradling. Other local bootleggers also agreed to testify against Spradling once the case broke.
The sheriff hired Oxford attorney Grady Tollison to represent him. Spradling’s main deputy, Charles Crayton, often picked up the payoffs for the sheriff, so we got him on tape and approached him about testifying against Spradling. He refused. His lawyer was Frank Russell, a colorful character given to practical jokes. Grady Tollison came forward on the Sunday night before the Monday trial and we made him a little better offer. It was a classic case of law in real time. “Gentlemen,” Grady said, “my client thinks your offer is fair and wants to take it, but he can’t sign until tomorrow morning.” We immediately guessed the reason: “He hasn’t told his wife yet, has he? He’s told her he’s innocent, and she’s defended him against everyone and now he’s going to catch unshirted hell.” Grady nodded. “That’s it. But we’ll have a deal in the morning if she doesn’t beat him to death overnight.”
Spradling pled guilty the next morning, followed by the deputy. Grady and Crayton’s lawyer, Frank Russell, stopped by our office on their way to interviews with probation officers. Frank said, “I’ll bet you prosecutor boys have never seen a real attorney-client agreement, have you?” Not waiting for a reply, he pulled from his briefcase a formal-looking document with a blue back and a gold seal from a notary public. It read, as best I recall, “I, Charles Crayton do hereby solemnly agree to pay my attorney, Frank Russell, for his excellent services in my case by mowing his lawn as long as we both shall live.”
“It’s Hard to Tell the Truth When There’s So Much Truth to Tell”22
In 1993, the aldermen of Holly Springs became concerned about drug trafficking in their city, especially the appearance that police officers were involved. Determined that outside help was needed, they directed Mayor Eddie Smith Jr. to seek help from the State Attorney General’s office. Smith, a retired Rust College professor and the town’s first black mayor in a century, had been in office just two years. The attorney general referred Smith to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics (MBN), a statewide organization. They referred him to the FBI because the matter involved not just drugs but police corruption.
Mayor Smith asked the FBI to investigate his police department, and furnished them all information they asked for, including names of all Holly Springs police officers. Mayor Smith asked the FBI not to keep him informed of the investigation or its undercover aspects. The next he heard of it was when four officers and a large number of drug dealers were arrested.
Mike Barker, the FBI agent assigned to run the investigation, was a former detective from North Carolina with fourteen years’ experience and a B.A. in justice administration. Barker directed a joint federal-state task force of officers from MBN, FBI, IRS, U.S. Customs, ATF, and the U.S. Marshals Service. Undercover agents began buying drugs in “Crack Alley,” the narrow street behind the police station, finding it so wide-open that dealers sold to total strangers in broad daylight. The agents had no success, however, approaching local police officers to buy protection. Only a known local person would be accepted, and given the demographics of the drug trade in Holly Springs, only a local black person could penetrate the obvious local police corruption. Stanley Woodson, a local man recently released after a year in federal prison for federal program fraud, agreed to work with the U.S. Attorney’s Office as an undercover informant for the task force to catch the corrupt police officers he said he knew were protecting crack dealers.
Based upon predication, that is, reasonable suspicion that he was corrupt, the FBI first sent Woodson to Captain Willie Frank Jones to buy protection. Woodson claimed he dealt crack, the prevalent drug in the area. All drug buys made by the undercover agents were of crack, the drug a real dope dealer would be expected by corrupt police to be selling. Barker equipped Woodson with an expensive, Swiss-made Nagra tape recorder to record the exact words of Woodson and officers so there would be no dispute as to what was said about drugs and payoffs. Woodson also wore a transmitter, hidden inside what appeared to be a typical drug dealer’s beeper, so that surveillance agents could hear him and assist him if necessary. As agent Barker explained, it is much harder to work undercover against officers than drug dealers because officers are trained in undercover and surveillance techniques.
Before each transaction, Barker placed a recorder on Woodson, started the tape, and announced the date, time, and place. He gave Woodson the amount of each payoff in cash, recording the serial numbers. After the payoffs, which took place in police cars, in courthouse bathrooms, and at defendants’ homes, Woodson and Barker would rendezvous, often with us present, at Wall Doxey, a beautiful, isolated state park a few miles south of town. In all, there were thirty-four tapes of conversations, twenty-nine involving payoffs received by the four officers. We had a typed transcript made of each tape, which jurors could read at trial while each tape was played. Jurors had earphones to hear the tapes clearly over a sophisticated infrared system.
From January to June 1993, Woodson made ten payoffs of $150 each to Captain Jones; seven similar payoffs to Billy Ray Gray and deputy sheriff Sylvester Byers; and five $500 payoffs to Chief Anthony Marion, whom Woodson approached last, as suggested by Jones. A large computer-generated color chart of all the payoffs was used as a summary exhibit to assist the jury.
Woodson, a thirty-three-year-old truck driver, was well-known in Holly Springs. He first talked with Captain Jones, who agreed to protect Woodson’s alleged operation selling crack cocaine (rock) and marijuana (weed). The meeting took place inside the police station, where Jones accepted $150 and instructed Woodson not to let his customers
see all his dope, just the rocks they were buying, to avoid being ripped off. On February 5, Jones took another $150 and when Woodson said, “everybody is getting money” from dealers, Jones said, “I know.” On February 16, Jones accepted $150 cash inside his police patrol car and told Woodson he had “partners,” naming officer Billy Ray Gray and deputy sheriff Sylvester Byers, saying, “talk to Billy Ray.” On February 19, Gray accepted $150 and confirmed that Jones had talked to Gray beforehand.
On February 24, Byers accepted $150 and said he expected to be paid $150 every Saturday unless Woodson was in Florida picking up cocaine. Jones took a $150 cash payoff that same day, saying Chief Marion would take payoffs later, but “right now is a bad time.” Jones warned Woodson about “snitches,” saying never to tell anyone when he was going to pick up a load of drugs. Jones said not to be seen wearing a pager, because drug dealers wore them, and told Woodson the police department’s undercover technique of having officers hide their transmitters inside pagers. Ironically, that is precisely what Woodson was doing at that very moment. Jones told Woodson not to flash big rolls of money and that wearing gold chains and driving Cadillacs were bad ideas, likely to attract attention of the honest police officers. A major hitch that day was that a nearby police scanner broadcast part of Jones’s words with Woodson over the airwaves, but fortunately for us, law enforcement had become so lax that no one seemed to be paying attention.
From Midnight to Guntown Page 18