“This is a case about a politician who took bribes,” Kathleen O. Gavin, an assistant U.S. attorney, told jurors at the outset of her presentation. “He sold his office for almost a quarter of a million dollars.”
Attorneys for Currie and the two executives countered that what unfolded looked nothing like bribery as most people understand it. Currie and Shoppers had signed a consulting contract, the lawyers said. Currie paid state and federal taxes on his income from Shoppers. And his work was hardly a “secret bribery relationship,” a defense lawyer said. Currie appeared in public at store openings across the region.
“Their allegations simply do not make sense,” said Lucius T. Outlaw III, an assistant federal public defender who is representing Currie and who warned jurors that they would hear nothing about wiretaps, hidden stashes of cash or kickbacks.
The lawyers’ statements were the opening salvos in what is expected to be a highly contentious trial that could, if Currie is convicted, send him, the former chairman of the Senate budget committee, to prison. The judge has said the trial is likely to run about six weeks.
Prosectors allege that Currie’s abuses of his position included helping Shoppers transfer a liquor license, get a rent reduction at one store, win approval for a stoplight benefiting another and secure a road improvement at a third location.
Gavin said that on several projects, Currie “summoned” high-ranking state officials to his office in Annapolis and that at no time did Currie share with them that he was being paid by Shoppers.
She said his activities went far beyond an initial agreement with Shoppers that called for providing help with minority outreach and community relations. That agreement, Gavin alleged, was “a sham.”
Currie’s lawyers sought to address some of the liabilities they face: politicians’ low standing with the public and the undisputed fact that Currie did not list his work for Shoppers on state financial disclosure forms for five years in a row.
Outlaw urged jurors to “judge this case on its merits” and not lump Currie in with corrupt politicians they’ve heard about. Currie, the son of a North Carolina sharecropper who gained his prominence through hard work, is actually “an American success story,” Outlaw said.
Outlaw said Currie’s failure to list Shoppers income on disclosure forms might be notable if it were the only omission over the years. But Currie has a history of providing inaccurate, inconsistent and untimely information on those forms, Outlaw said.
Loading...
Comments