Defense asks for Young acquittal

Judge Daniel Breen will rule this morning. If the motion is granted, Young will be exonerated from a four-count indictment that charges he paid former Trezevant High school football coach Lynn Lang $150,000 to ensure Albert Means enrolled at Alabama.

If the defense presents its case today it is expected to include a number of witnesses to rebut the testimony given by Lang on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In that testimony, Lang said that eight schools, including Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas and Georgia, offered him cash and promises of jobs for his help in recruiting Means. Lang claimed that former Georgia coach Jim Donnan gave him $700 and promised him a job. Donnan pointed out that Georgia was exonerated of those charges by the NCAA.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Donnan and several other coaches may take the stand today to refute what Lang has said.

Defense attorney Robert Hutton argued that in presenting its case, the government had not proven that Young had actually broken any laws and all charges against his client should be dismissed.

"There is no proof in the record that there was a law prohibiting Lynn Lang from doing what he did," argued Hutton. "The government never had anybody testify that it is illegal for a high school coach to take money to recommend to a player where to go to college."

As an example, Hutton used University of Memphis basketball coach John Calipari and his agreement with adidas.

Hutton argued that Calipari is an employee of the state and a public official, and that he takes money from adidas for making his players wear adidas products.

So if that's not a crime, Hutton asked, why is it a crime for a high school teacher who is a public official (Lang) to take money from a Crimson Tide booster (Young) for making his player (Means) go to Alabama?

Hutton's motion capped an otherwise tedious day of testimony featuring bank and phone records that seemed to have the jury drifting in and out of attention.

Aware this might happen, the prosecution prefaced this part of its case by telling jurors that the document introduction might get tedious. At any rate, Asst. U.S. Atty. Fred Godwin moved forward with the underlying theme being if the government can't show the actual fire, it can at least present a lot of smoke.

For instance, Godwin presented bank records belonging to Lang and Young from June 1999 to November 2000.

In that span, Young had 64 cash withdrawals totaling $291,050. Meanwhile, Lang made $47,269.99 in cash deposits, which did not include his paychecks from Memphis City Schools.

To wrap its case, and summarize it, the government called John Ford III, an FBI financial analyst who found 13 instances when a significant withdrawal was taken from Young's account and a significant deposit was put into Lang's account on the same or the next business day.

One example showed Young withdrawing $9,000 on April 13, 2000, and $4,000 on April 14, 2000. Lang made a cash deposit of $8,000 on April 14, 2000.

During cross examination, defense attorney Allan Wade asked a simple question.

"Is there any evidence that any of that money (in Lang's account) came from Logan Young?"

"No," answered Ford.

Local Tennessee fan Roy Adams made his first official appearance in the case this morning.

A Wednesday night post on an Internet message board that caters to Tennessee fans, under the screen name "TennStud", detailed the day's happenings, as posts have since this trial began. Among the things written were that TennStud had drinks after court adjourned with media members and jurors.

Defense attorney Jim Neal asked judge Daniel Breen to send a marshal after Adams to have him downtown to address this issue. Judge Breen declined, but when Adams arrived shortly before jurors were brought in, he was summoned to the podium and asked about this post.

Adams acknowledged that he does post under the name "TennStud," and that no one else used that name. However, he denied having contact with any juror and said that someone must have edited his post after he finished.

When the jury was brought in, Judge Breen asked if any of them had spoken with anybody about the case. They each indicated that they had not.