Charlie Russell - early Ramsey PR consultant

Little · Jun 29, 2005

Is this how you create your own reality? (bold emphasis mine)

Consultant helped tame Scrushy image in media
By Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News
June 29, 2005

As far as Charlie Russell is concerned, the prosecution began trying its federal fraud case against Richard Scrushy two years ago.

That made life difficult for the Denver-based communications consultant, who was hired to polish the former HealthSouth CEO's image a year before trial.

"I wanted to try to create the opportunity for the lawyers to pick a fair jury pool," Russell said. "My part in the trial was get (potential jurors) to suspend their belief in his guilt to whatever degree that was possible."

His strategy paid off. Jurors on Tuesday acquitted Scrushy of all 36 charges involved in orchestrating a $2.7 billion fraud, a resounding defeat for the prosecution.

Russell, 64, arrived in Birmingham, Ala., in early 2004 with the weight of public opinion against his client. At that time, he said, the prosecution had already begun airing details about Scrushy's penchant for antique cars, powerboats and art collecting. They'd unveiled "allegedly defamatory" evidence in news conferences, he said.

Likewise, reports said public opinion in Birmingham was against Scrushy, as many residents had lost money on HealthSouth stock and people had lost jobs at the company's shuttered rehab centers.

"It was almost a classic case of demonization," Russell said.

Russell is no stranger to underdogs. His clients have included John and Patsy Ramsey, parents of murder victim JonBenet Ramsey, as well as cigarette maker Philip Morris and building materials manufacturer Louisiana-Pacific (when it was under criminal indictment).

In the Ramsey case, he put up a Web site to provide daily statements to the media, an unusual move in 1997.

This time, he counseled Scrushy to air a half-hour cable television show last year, he said, "so that (Scrushy) could appear in public on a daily basis, rather than going and hiding in a hole under a barrage of negative comment."

Scrushy and his wife, Leslie, interviewed Birmingham-area pastors and executive directors of Birmingham nonprofits. The show focused on Scrushy's clean-cut image. When the trial began, Scrushy was often accompanied to the courthouse by his wife and supporters clutching small Bibles.

Once the trial started, Russell also provided the defense team with morning, noon and evening media statements. He also made sure attorneys were accessible to the media.

Over time, Russell said, he detected less vitriol in the media, something that could affect jurors who - while barred from reading about the case - would still hear about it from spouses, other family members and even neighbors.

Throughout the trial, Scrushy was an "amazing" and "positive" man, Russell said. The father of nine maintained his energy by exercising and praying daily.

Why, then, was such a "good man" vilified?

Russell says that Birmingham is populated with "old money" families who dislike upstarts such as Scrushy, a former gas station attendant and trailer park denizen who became a rehabilitation therapist and eventually built the largest U.S. chain of rehabilitation hospitals and clinics.

What about the wrath of investors who saw their shares plunge from around $12 to nearly zero in the months after the fraud was revealed?

"It just depends when they bought and sold," replies Russell. "The stock is $6 today, and people who have still got their stock haven't lost anything."

As for Tuesday's verdict, "I'm not surprised. Out of 6 million pages of documents that the government surrendered on discovery, there was not an e-mail or a sticky note or letter or memo that showed that Richard Scrushy had any knowledge of the fraud," he said.

Source: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/business/article/0,1299,DRMN_4_3890131,00.html
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Little · Jun 29, 2005

"When John and Patsy Ramsey appeared on national television New Year's Day, John Ramsey announced he wanted to hire "the best minds this country has to offer" to find his daughter's killer."

Ramseys hire only 'the best'
By ELLIOT ZARET
Camera Staff Writer
Saturday, January 18, 1997

When John and Patsy Ramsey appeared on national television New Year's Day, John Ramsey announced he wanted to hire "the best minds this country has to offer" to find his daughter's killer.

Since then, the family has fulfilled that promise - assembling a team of lawyers, investigators, a former FBI agent, a media consultant and even a handwriting expert.

The Ramseys' daughter, 6-year-old JonBenet, was found strangled in the basement of the family home Dec. 26, about eight hours after her mother reported her kidnapped. More than three weeks later, few new details are emerging in the investigation of her murder.

The "Ramsey team" has attracted attention because of the number of high-profile experts on it.

Karen Duffala, deputy director of the National Law Enforcement Center at the University of Denver Research Institute, said she has never seen a team like this, "not all joined together."

"What's unusual is, these individuals are of national status - very well-known - and they're people that the Ramseys had access to," said Duffala, a former investigator at the Aurora Police Department.

At the center of the Ramsey team is Pat Korten, a Washington, D.C., expert on "crisis management." Korten's company, Rowan & Blewitt Inc., addresses issues involving "litigation, public policy debate and scrutiny from the media, government, special interest and community organization(s)," according to company literature.

Before joining Rowan & Blewitt about a year ago, Korten had been a journalist, talk-show host, spokesperson for a pharmaceutical trade association, and spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan administration.

Korten, who now acts as the Ramseys' spokesperson, answers the flood of up to 200 media calls daily on behalf of the family. He also has set up a World Wide Web page for the family, with responses to coroner's photographs printed in the Globe tabloid and more.

The Ramseys also hired a pair of powerful Denver attorneys to advise them in the case: G. Bryan Morgan and Patrick Burke.
Morgan, 59, a founding partner of the high-powered criminal defense law firm Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, represents John Ramsey. Morgan, who teaches professional responsibility at the University of Colorado Law School, was a Colorado Supreme Court nominee and an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for CU regent.

"He's a highly respected, extremely competent and wonderfully intelligent lawyer," said CU evidence and criminal law professor Mimi Wesson. "He's well regarded in all quarters as a highly ethical and responsible lawyer."

Gene Nichol, former dean of the CU Law School, described Morgan, who was the finance chair for Nichol's unsuccessful Senate campaign, as "a real accomplished criminal lawyer" and "a very effective and passionate advocate."

Morgan won a high-profile murder case in 1980 when he represented Lee Bobb Lindsley in the 1978 shooting death of her husband, Dr. Warren Felix B. Lindsley. Lindsley had been charged with first-degree murder.

Lee Foreman, 51, another partner in the firm, also is working on the case. A former special prosecutor for the Colorado attorney general and president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, Foreman is playing more of a background role in the case.

Burke, 47, who represents Patsy Ramsey, was formerly an assistant city attorney in Lakewood, assistant state attorney general and a federal public defender. Burke has been involved in a number of high-profile cases. In 1987, he successfully defended Richard Scutari, one of four white supremacists accused of violating the civil rights of Jewish talk-show host Alan Berg, who was murdered.

Perhaps the most famous of all the Ramsey team members is former FBI criminal personality profiler John Douglas - the inspiration for special agent Jack Crawford in the movie "The Silence of the Lambs."

In his 25-year career with the FBI, Douglas was a pioneer of modern criminal investigative analysis and became the leading expert on criminal personality profiling. He has studied and interviewed dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.

Douglas has co-authored books on the killers and his profiling adventures, including "Mind Hunter" and "Unabomber." He's also been an expert witness for both prosecution and defense. Douglas has said he sometimes loses favor with those who hire him because he doesn't always tell them what they want to hear.

"There are defense attorneys contacting me to look at their cases, and I tell them, "I don't know what I'm going to say on this, you might not like what I have to say,'" Douglas said in an interview with the American College of Forensic Examiners.

Ironically, Douglas favors "proactive techniques" - or giving as much information out to the public as possible, something that appears contrary to the Boulder Police Department's tight-lipped policy on the Ramsey case.

Boulder city spokesman Kelvin McNeill said Douglas will be given "an opportunity to provide insight" to police detectives investigating JonBenet's murder. But, he added, "we have said all along that outside investigators are not more or less entitled to information than the general public or media."

The identity of one team member remains a mystery. Korten said the Ramseys hired a handwriting analyst - one that Newsweek magazine reported cleared the Ramseys of involvement in the ransom note. Korten would not comment on the report, nor would he divulge the identity of the analyst, saying only, "He's very well-known in the field."

Rounding out the team are two private investigators: H. Ellis Armistead and David L. Williams.

Armistead, 46, is a former Lakewood police officer and a special investigator for the Routt County district attorney's office. As a private investigator, Armistead is known for his ability "to get statements from witnesses that I didn't think would ever talk to us," said one defense attorney.

Williams has been a private investigator for nearly 20 years. Prior to that he spent five years on the Colorado Organized Crime Strike Force. As a whole, the group may seem unusual, but "it is equally unusual for crime victims to be as wealthy as the Ramseys," said Wesson.

"It sounds like an extraordinary assembly of talents

Source: http://www.boulderdailycamera.com/extra/ramsey/1997/01/18-1.html
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Little

JC · Jun 29, 2005

Richard Scrushy - I think he must be part of some New Life church movement which is headquarted in Colorado Springs. The highest of the high in the church talk with the President or someone his office on a weekly basis. Only yesterday I read an article about them in Harper's magazine (May edition).

When I saw Scrushy on tv last night I almost would have thought he was a preacher.

DocG · Jun 29, 2005

"Only the best"

What's not said in that report and is in fact hardly ever mentioned is this: there is no way of knowing how many profilers and handwriting experts were hired in the first place. Thanks to the workings of lawyer-client privilege, anyone hired to work the case is sworn to secrecy beforehand. The clients and their lawyers decide what will be made public and what won't. Yes, John Douglas decided John is innocent (no comment on Patsy), but how many other profilers were hired who decided otherwise? We may never know. Yes, two handwriting "experts" ruled John out, but how many others were there who ruled him IN? If there were any, you can be sure that would NOT have been made public.

We do know that one or both of the Ramseys failed a polygraph test. They were asked about that point blank on national television and refused to answer, invoking "lawyer-client privilege." Looks very much like someone tested them early on -- and must have found something fishy, because THAT person's results were never made public. How many others like him were there? We may never know.

Elle · Jun 29, 2005

Thanks for these posts, Little. The Ramseys did hire the best, and the Ramseys are hoping their psychology will work, that we, the public will think "the Ramseys must be innocent!" Why would they bother to put out all that money, if they already were involved themselves? They know within themselves the death of their daughter, JonBenÃ©t was not a premeditated murder, but an accidental death, but they don't have the guts to admit it to the public.

Reading over how these Charlatans like Richard Scrushy operate makes me ill.

JC · Jun 29, 2005

Elle_1 said:

Thanks for these posts, Little. The Ramseys did hire the best, and the Ramseys are hoping their psychology will work, that we, the public will think "the Ramseys must be innocent!" Why would they bother to put out all that money, if they already were involved themselves? They know within themselves the death of their daughter, JonBenÃ©t was not a premeditated murder, but an accidental death, but they don't have the guts to admit it to the public.

Reading over how these Charlatans like Richard Scrushy operate makes me ill.
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Imho, they should admit it, too. I don't think they ever will. I'm thinking not cooperating from the very first was very bad and very expensive advise.

Elle · Jun 29, 2005

I don't think they'll ever admit it either, JC. In Patsy's eyes she has already been forgiven by her own God, therefore why does she need to confess anything? She is one super steel magnolia.

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