UPDATE: The jury broke the deadlock. Guilty. See ya suckers.

From Tuscaloosa this morning, The Birmingham News is reporting that the jury in the Shelton State trial is deadlocked. We were worried something like this might happen when we saw the name of the presiding federal judge, Karon O. Bowdre.

Gail Phillips and Mindy Sexton are on trial for allegedly cheating Shelton State in a real estate swindle.

Some of you might remember Bowdre, who also presided over the accounting fraud trial of HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. That case ended in an acquittal, but not before jury deliberations dragged on for six weeks.

If Bowdre’s modus operandi remains unchanged, jurors could have a hard time wrestling with the judge’s definition of knowledge, a common prerequisite for a conviction in most crimes. “Remember, you can never know what someone else knows,” became a constant mantra from Bowdre during the Scrushy trial. After the verdict, several jurors in that case said they could not have convicted Scrushy unless he had testified to what he knew and incriminated himself on the stand.

We’re not lawyers, but from covering numerous other federal cases our experience tells us that such a high burden on the prosecution is unusual, or to be more blunt, unheard of – except in Bowdre’s court.

Perhaps future voir dire questionnaires should ask potential jurors if they have ESP.

— Kyle Whitmire