Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: A losing bet

  Last month’s bingo gambling trial ended as expected. All six of the defendants were found not guilty by a Montgomery federal jury. The first trial lasted almost the entire summer of 2011. Federal prosecutors put on elaborate testimony and tapes and brought 138 charges. The jury in that case found no validity in 99 of those counts against nine original defendants. Even in the face of this humiliating defeat, where they spent over $30 million and got no convictions, they astonishingly sought a second trial. The second jury, which mirrored the first one demographically found the remaining six defendants not guilty on the 27 remaining counts.