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Not guilty; Preuitt ready to resume his life

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Former State Sen. Jim Preuitt of Talladega is glad the gambling trial is over and is ready to resume his life now that his name has been cleared.

Preuitt was speaking from his dealership Wednesday afternoon following his acquittal by a jury in Montgomery earlier in the day.

“It’s been a trying year and a half, going on two years now,” Preuitt said. “Thank goodness it’s over. My family is grateful for the all the people who stuck by me and all the letters, calls, prayers and support we got from the community. And we kept the business running. It was not fun, but now it’s over.”

Preuitt added that he was “grateful for the support of my wife, my family and the community. A number of families had a harder time than we did coming out of this. I’m a pretty tough old bird, but I know this was hard on my wife and family. I’ve been in plenty of political fights before, and I can pretty well stand whatever they throw at me, but it’s harder for them. I’ve had some tribulations, but some people had to mortgage their homes, borrow money and have their families pledge their assets to pay their legal bills. It’s just amazing to me that, out of what, 133 indictments, they did not get one conviction. The guilty ones all pleaded guilty.”

He went on to say, “Bill Baxley once said, and this is a direct quote, ‘thank God for the tapes.’ I agree. They had something like 8,000 hours of taped conversation, and they only played 40. Also thank God for the transcripts from the first trial, which showed how Jennifer Pouncy, Ronnie Gilley and Jarrod Massey contradicted themselves testifying this time. And thank God for the jury, who worked hard, looked at all the evidence and replayed all the tapes. They went through all those charges and found all of us not guilty.”

Preuitt estimates the federal government spent about $50 million on the first trial, plus more for the second, plus the massive amounts of private money going to lawyers “and we all end up being vindicated. It’s terrible.”

Preuitt said his family has been in Talladega for 45 years. “Talladega has been very good for us, and we’ve been able to survive financially. I look forward to getting back to my customers and the fine people of Talladega. I’m still operating a business and I’m looking forward to getting back to work. Even if you don’t buy a car, come on by, the coffee pot is always on and the popcorn machine is always ready to go.”

He said he was always particularly careful with campaign funds and “never thought I would ever even be charged with something like this. There is no question that this was politically motivated, although I don’t want to go into the specifics of that right now. But I will say it goes deeper than what’s on the surface and what we’ve seen in print so far. It’s sad to me that politics could cause so much disruption, but it has not really harmed me. But this is much more politically motivated than it seems at the surface.”

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Keywords: gambling, trial, Preuitt, Former State Senator, Talladega,

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