U.S District Court Judge William Bertlesman has declared a mistrial, as jurors deadlock on two lawyers charged with diet-drug settlement fraud. The jury had been considering the fate of suspended lawyers William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr., who are accused of defrauding their clients out of $65 million Fen-Phen settlement. The third attorney defendant Melbourne Mills was acquitted and released.
New trial date to be set. Click here for N.Ky Post story.
Jason Riley and Andrew Wolfson have a story at the Courier Journal wrapping this up nicely.
Mistrial declared after diet-drug jury deadlocks
COVINGTON, Ky. -- After 52 hours of deliberation over eight days, a federal jury yesterday declared it was hopelessly deadlocked in deciding whether attorneys William Gallion and Shirley Cunningham Jr. defrauded clients of $65 million in Kentucky's 2001 fen-phen settlement.
After the judge declared a mistrial, the jury foreman, Donald Rainone of Erlanger, said jurors were stuck at 10-2 to acquit the defendants, and had been at that vote for much of their deliberations.
"We felt the prosecution just didn't have a strong enough case," Rainone said in a phone interview in which he strongly criticized the prosecution for being unprepared and focusing its case on only Gallion, Cunningham and a third lawyer, Melbourne Mills Jr.
"There's a lot of people that had their hand in this," he said. "There's a lot of people that should have been on trial that weren't."
Rainone declined to say who else should have been on trial, saying he didn't want to "get sued."
Defense attorneys immediately asked that the defendants be released from jail, where they have been since August, pending payment of enormous bonds. Gallion's is set at $52 million and Cunningham's is $45 million.
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