Neither Brilliant Nor Glorious
The criminal trial hasn’t started yet, but the hardball legal tactics for jury selection by the defense attorneys for the two indicted Balch & Bingham partners has even caused the federal judge to shake his head.
Pulitzer prize-winning journalist John Archibald writes:
A member of the jury pool, it had been learned, works at Balch & Bingham, the same law firm that employs defendants Joel Gilbert and Steve McKinney. You’d think that would be enough to let her go, in the interest of fairness. But a lawyer for the defense was not willing to concede that fact alone was enough to disqualify her to serve on the jury.
[W]e learned there is not just one Balch employee on this 58-member pool of potential jurors, but two. Not only that but there was a third, a lawyer who left Balch recently to go to work for another Birmingham law firm.
What are the odds that three of the 58 would have close ties to the firm of the accused bribers? Not good. Of course – surely — they won’t make the actual jury. That’s just too far to fathom.
Just like Balch’s biggest stooge, former U.S. Senator Luther Strange, who thought he would win the election because he was so well connected, Alabamians saw through the corruption, the dirty, backroom deal he made with disgraced former Governor Robert Bentley.
Alabamians are sick of the corruption. And like Strange, Balch is oblivious to the tide of discontent.
What is on display is neither brilliant nor glorious. It’s annoying, petty tactics that could only backfire.
Like the secretive Star Chamber, this conduct by Balch’s defense team demonstrates neither legal defense nor inherent goodness, but looks like a flagrant abuse of the legal system, a mockery of the process.
We understand from our Balch sources that partners at the firm have been up late at night at the office, and up early brewing coffee as the sun rises.
The stress, the anxiety has made Balch and Balch’s legal team blind to their bullying tactics.
But the jury will clearly see those same unsavory tactics on display, live and in color, for the next several weeks. And it will only backfire.
