Midlands gambler Parker wins legal bet: verdict overturned

COLUMBIA, SC In poker, three of a kind usually wins.

And Midlands gambler Jack Parker knows the same is true in appeals to the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a 3-0 unanimous opinion on Thursday, a three-judge panel for the 4th Circuit overturned Parker’s conviction on the grounds the prosecutors should have disclosed evidence to the defense lawyers in a timely fashion.

“I’m happy,” said Parker, 73, an ex-Marine and longtime sports bookie, in a brief interview on Thursday.

Parker’s lawyer, Josh Kendrick, said he was pleased with the ruling. “The next step is to sit down with the U.S. Attorney’s office and see where we go from here.”

In December 2013, after a jury found Parker guilty of running an illegal Midlands gambling operation, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie sentenced him to five months in prison. That’s not a long sentence compared with many in federal court, but longer than Parker wants to spend away from his grandson.

Parker has never denied he was taking bets on sports games. After all, he said, gambling is part of the fabric of the state’s culture. But he didn’t work in a large group. To be convicted under federal law, the government had to prove that Parker ran a betting operation with five or more active participants.

"I’m guilty of bookmaking, but not with five people," Parker said in an interview earlier this spring.

Kendrick argued the case three months ago before the 4th Circuit Court panel.

Crucial evidence that prosecutors withheld during the trial was about a prosecution witness who testified about the possible fifth person in the gambling ring, according to records in the case.

That prosecution witness was Ben Staples, whose testimony, more than any evidence, linked Parker’s daughter-in-law, Tammy Parker, now deceased, to being one of the five key members of Parker’s gambling ring.

At the time Staples testified about Tammy Parker, defense attorneys were unaware Staples was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office for allegedly defrauding elderly terminally ill people of $6.5 million.

Thus, Staples’ testimony putting Tammy Parker as an active member of the gambling ring was crucial, Kendrick argued.

Prosecutors failed to reveal the Staples’ investigation to defense attorneys, so they were unable to cross-examine him on those allegations. In the criminal justice system, prosecutors have to turn over all information to the defense that might have a bearing on their client’s innocence. Otherwise, defendants can’t have a fair trial, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

In arguments before the 4th Circuit three-judge panel, judges grilled assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Richardson from the Columbia office about Staples and prosecutors’ actions in the case.

"Mr. Richardson, your office knew he was being investigated for fraud on the elderly, which is like throwing a match on gasoline, and yet your office elected to do nothing about it," Judge Barbara Keenan, one of the judges, told Richardson, according to a tape of the hearing available on the 4th Circuit website.

Richardson replied, "We certainly wish that we had."

Keenan said, "That doesn’t help you a whole lot, does it?"

Richardson has recently been tapped to handle the prosecution of accused racial mass murderer Dylann Roof. Roof, 21, who is white, faces state charges of killing nine African Americans last week in a Charleston church.

The opinion Thursday also overturned the conviction of co-defendant of Parker’s, Doug Taylor.

This story was originally published June 25, 2015 at 12:05 PM with the headline "Midlands gambler Parker wins legal bet: verdict overturned."