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BGonline.org Forums
Much more to this story
Posted By: Steve Mellen In Response To: Much more to this story (Stanley E. Richards)
Date: Tuesday, 19 October 2010, at 11:38 p.m.
Your guess is as good as mine, although I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the PPA or a similar organization financed the defense costs. There are a lot of people, some of them very wealthy, who very much want poker to be legal in this country. Thus they give money to organizations like the PPA and fund litigation like this case in hopes of setting a favorable precedent. This doesn't strike me as unusual.
Your estimate of defense costs is likely on the low side, considering there has already been a full-blown trial and then an appeal. Even at South Carolina billing rates, far more reasonable than the NYC rates I am accustomed to, the defense surely cost six figures and then some.
The prosecution's costs, of course, are borne by the good taxpayers of South Carolina, who might want to think about changing the law if they don't like their money being spend on cases of this sort. As for the motivation in spending all this money, well, the case basically starts with some local cops busting a poker game and giving out tickets, a reasonably normal occurrence. It's silly to blow the entire budget of the prosecutor's office on a single case (think about how much the original OJ trial cost), but it would set a bad precedent for the government to say "we're going to drop this case because the defendant has too much money for us to do it cost-effectively." So I really don't know if it's a case of a prosecutor or Attorney General who is staunchly anti-gambling or if things just kind of took their normal course.
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