The Joplin Globe
Wednesday November 6, 1996
By Gary Garton
Globe Baxter Springs Bureau
TULSA, Okla. – Jurors deliberated two hours Tuesday without reaching a verdict in the federal gambling and racketeering trial of Ottawa County Sheriff Ed Walker.
The jury is to continue its work today in U.S. District Court.
Walker, 48, is charged with five counts of extortion, four counts of aiding and abetting illegal gambling and three counts of obstruction of justice.
In closing arguments Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Steve Lewis reviewed for the jury testimony from six people who said they gave Walker money directly to allow illegal gambling machines to operate in Ottawa County. He also outlined supporting testimony from bar owners.
Lewis also cited telephone records showing 253 long-distance calls from Walker’s office or home to gambling machine vendors or bar owners, and two money orders from a vendor’s wife that were cashed by Walker and his wife.
“Illegal gambling in Ottawa County was something that grew like a skin blemish that becomes a wart or sore, then turns into cancer,” Lewis told the jury.
“Ed Walker had three options when he found out about it: do nothing, stop it, or join the ones controlling it and go into business with them. He chose the latter.”
Walker’s defense attorney, Gary Richardson, continued to attack the reliability of prosecution witnesses who have accepted plea-bargains with the government. He again asked jurors to consider the theory that the gambling group conspired to frame Walker because “he was making waves and it was slopping over onto the wrong people.”
In rebuttal, Lewis countered, “Even if you could get those people to agree on a conspiracy like that it would take an awfully large auditorium to get them all together to make up their story.”
Walker, who is on paid suspension as sheriff, has denied the allegations, saying they were politically motivated. He did not run for re-election this year.
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