Former House Speaker Ray Sansom and his two co-defendants were back in
court today, but the focus of the hearing is Willie Meggs, the
outspoken state attorney who's prosecuting the case. Meggs has been the
elected state attorney for the Second Judicial Circuit for 25 years.
Lawyers
for all three defendants want Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to dismiss
grand theft charges and have Meggs removed from the case because of
prosecutorial misconduct, including illegally releasing witnesses'
grand jury testimony to reporters and improper questioning of witnesses
before grand jurors.
"This is really hard for us,
professionally," said Jimmy Judkins, the attorney for Destin developer
Jay Odom. "We've had personal relations with Mr. Meggs for 30 years,
some of us."
Meggs declined to make an opening statement, and
Hank Coxe, the attorney for former Northwest College State College
President Bob Richburg, called Meggs as a witness. Sansom's lawyer,
Steve Dobson, said the hearing could last for as much as six hours.
Sansom,
Odom and Richburg face a felony charge of illegally using tax money
from the Legislature to build a college building that Meggs says was to
have been used as a hangar for Odom's executive jet business. All three
men have denied wrongdoing.
– Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
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