Bingo Media Roundup: Beason under attack, juror balks at tapes
In a rough day for the bingo trial prosecution, a juror asks whether the feds’ tactics constitute entrapment, and McGregor defense lawyer Segall lacerates Beason with his own words.
Talking to fellow Republicans, Sen. Scott Beason referred to Greenetrack customers as “aborigines” and made disparaging comments about black voters, recordings read into the court record today revealed.
Sen. Scott Beason
Beason is under cross examination for a second day in the corruption trial of Milton McGregor and eight others. The state senator from Gardendale, who recorded conversations with legislators, lobbyists and gambling proponents, is the prosecution’s first witness.
On Tuesday, defense lawyer Bobby Segall read to Beason comments he made about black leadership in the Alabama Democratic Party. Talking to other Republicans, Beason said that if blacks took over the Democratic leadership in the Alabama House, it would hurt their party.
On Wednesday morning, Segall had Beason read even more damning comments into the record.
“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason says when talking to Republican colleagues about the Greenetrack casino in the majority black Greene County.
LISTEN: Did Beason blunder blow bingo prosecution?
In the same conversation, Beason and his colleagues called black voters ignorant and illiterate. If a statewide referendum were held on gambling, casinos would bus black voters to the polls and entice them with free food and bingo, Beason and his colleagues said.
Before a half black jury, the comments are potentially damning, especially in the hands of Segall, who taunted Beason for being dumb enough to say such things when he knew he was being recorded.
“If you made those comments when you knew you were recording, what must you have said when you weren’t recording? More of the same?” Segall asked.
Cross examination of Beason will continue in the afternoon.
RELATED: Defendant Harri Anne Smith demands Beason resign over racist comments
Reported by Madison Underwood from Montgomery and written by Kyle Whitmire in Birmingham.
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