3/20/09 – Ludicrous Remarks from Alamo’s New Lawyer: Alamo too old, too weak and too blind to have sex with girls
Fox 16
March 20, 2009
AP Interview
Lawyer says Alamo couldn’t do crimes
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – Poor eyesight and a diminishing physique would prevent Tony Alamo from crossing state lines and having sex with underage girls, a new defense lawyer for the jailed evangelist said Thursday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, California lawyer Danny Davis also questioned how the 74-year-old could have had sex with girls in showers and buses – allegations leveled against the evangelist since his Sept. 25 arrest. Alamo faces a 10-count federal indictment accusing him of transporting young girls across state lines for sex.
“If the sexual act is impossible, the intent may be highly doubtful,” Davis said. “We’re already looking at showers and buses where I feel it would be physically impossible already.”
Davis, a lawyer based in Beverly Hills, came to prominence for his role as a defense lawyer in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, one of the longest and costliest prosecutions in U.S. history. Defending preschool worker Raymond Buckey, Davis focused on discounting the alleged victims’ bizarre accounts of animal mutilation, blood drinking and underground tunnels running through the day-care center.
A jury acquitted Buckey of 40 charges, but deadlocked over 13 others. Prosecutors refiled eight charges against Buckey and a jury deadlocked in a second trial. Prosecutors declined to charge him a third time.
Davis, 63, said that the charges against Alamo had only a superficial similarity to the McMartin case, in that the young girls accusing the evangelist may have “cross-contaminated” each other’s stories with similar allegations. The lawyer also said Alamo’s poor eyesight showed he couldn’t have driven any vehicle across a state line. Instead, Davis said followers likely crossed state lines on their own.
Whether Alamo could take part in a sex act also will be examined and possibly included in his defense, Davis said.
“He looks like half of the size of the man. It’s almost like Santa Claus turned into Jack-Be-Nimble,” Davis said. “As a younger man, he was a strong bull of a man. At 74, he’s close to half of the weight.”
Little Rock lawyer John Wesley Hall Jr. had represented Alamo until this week. Davis said Alamo worried that Hall’s busy practice might prevent him from focusing on his case.
“He had one of the best in the state,” Davis said, later adding: “He’s a better lawyer than I am.”
This isn’t the first time Davis has represented Alamo in a criminal case. In 1991, Davis defended Alamo in California against felony child-abuse charges stemming from a 1988 beating of an 11-year-old boy that prosecutors said took place at an Alamo compound north of Los Angeles. Prosecutors ultimately decided not to take the case to trial after Alamo went to federal prison over tax evasion charges. At the time, prosecutors said Alamo would have served only five months in prison if convicted in the child-abuse case, something not worth the expense and time of a difficult trial.
Davis offered a different recollection.
“It seems to me that the case went away under its own failed merits,” he said.
Davis said he has begun to examine the case file, but may need to request a continuance to conduct additional interviews and gather evidence. He said work already has begun to examine the locations where Alamo allegedly had sex with the girls.
“This should be a state sex case. But because it’s got a federal vehicle, literally, with the transportation, they’ve got to prove his intent when he transported” the girls, Davis said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to prove he transported anyone.”
Alamo remains held without bond pending a May 18 trial.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
He’s never been a bull of a man, just a man full of bull.