One amazing element of the Richard Scrushy ‘not guilty’ verdict this week is the extent to which the defense played the race and civil rights cards … to save a rich white man. Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal Constitution comments:

Let’s say you’re a rich white guy who — according to the feds — has cooked the books at his company to get even richer, inflating earnings to the tune of $2.7 billion. What do you do when the law comes after you?

… Well, if you’re Richard Scrushy — founder and former CEO of Birmingham-based HealthSouth, a rehabilitation services company — you try to pass yourself off as a black man who is the victim of government persecution.

… A few years ago, Scrushy was just another self-aggrandizing, super-wealthy white guy, with mansions not just in the Birmingham area but also Palm Beach, expensive toys — including a Rolls-Royce and several boats — and a trophy wife. He attended a predominantly white suburban church.

But in 2003, HealthSouth ousted Scrushy as the feds closed in. With fraud charges imminent, Scrushy suddenly started attending a large, predominantly black church and began contributing large sums. He started preaching at other churches, favoring those with mostly black congregations. He became host of a religious TV program.

The WSJ wrapped up its trial coverage by noting, “The jury included seven African-Americans and five whites, and Mr. Scrushy’s lawyers emphasized during closing arguments his upbringing in Selma, Ala., where state troopers beat up civil-rights marchers in 1965, noting that juries played a powerful role in reversing past racial injustice in the U.S.”

And the Birmingham Weekly, in a long article, adds:

… the lead defense attorney, Watkins, … began by telling the jury about growing up as a disenfranchised black boy in Montgomery and how jurors just like them in courts just like this one had allowed him to drink from the same water fountain as whites, go to the same schools, and eventually be able to defend someone like his friend “Richard.”

The defense didn’t even need to bring up Mark Fuhrman, the LAPD, and the glove.

This is funny and sad. Funny because you can’t get much whiter than Richard Scrushy; sad because the defense obviously thought it would work, and maybe it did: who knows how much impact this smokescreen had on the jury? Scrushy got off in the face of what should have been, at a minimum, a slam dunk Sarbanes-Oxley conviction for signing false financial statements.

I suppose the day will come when juries will see past this manipulation and focus on the facts of their cases … but that day is not here yet. Somewhere the late Johnny Cochran is smiling.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2005 at 4:00 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Funny ... to us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.