Glaring Impunity: Balch’s Star Chamber Hits One-Year

Balch & Bingham has suffered serious damage because of Balch’s own, self-inflicted mistakes.

Tomorrow marks the one-year birthday of the secretive and unconstitutional Star Chamber in the Newsome Conspiracy Case foolishly pursued by Balch & Bingham at the height of two-federal probes last year.

We have heard from and read commentary from respected jurists to deans of the legal community in Alabama, from anonymous observers to victims of Balch’s shenanigans.

The bottom-line: the Star Chamber truly was the dumbest and most damaging  legal maneuver for Balch to have pursued in the past decade.

Unlike Balch & Bingham partner Joel I. Gilbert who engaged in criminal conduct on behalf of a client, the conduct against Burt Newsome was allegedly done on behalf of the firm: to steal Burt Newsome’s lucrative solo-attorney practice of servicing banks.

As one commentator wrote on the Legal Schnauzer blog:

Why would a lawyer at Balch and Bingham feel the need to steal a solo practitioner’s business. The Balch bastard can’t develop his own business? What kind of sorry-ass lawyers does Balch hire[?]

Balch appears to have targeted a competitor, and as an injured victim, Newsome has standing to pursue a civil RICO action, now that Gilbert was convicted on all six federal charges.

But regardless to what happens in the secretive Star Chamber or a long-drawn-out RICO action, Balch & Bingham has suffered serious damage because of Balch’s own, self-inflicted mistakes.

Targeting poor African-American children, suppressing an area that is 92.5 percent African-American, manipulating the Alabama judicial system, bribing elected officials, and laundering money to judges and politicians is nothing to celebrate on this one-year birthday.

The ice cream has melted and the cake has spoiled not because of BanBalch.com or Burt Newsome, but because of Balch & Bingham’s own, arrogant hubris and glaring impunity.