"We Hit the Jackpot"

By Richard Stengel

Any croupier (and Edwin Edwards has known quite a few) would have called it a high-risk roll. But the Louisiana Governor, who is proud to call himself a gambling man, felt the odds were in his favor when he took the stand last week in his trial on federal racketeering and fraud charges. For three days the bon temps Governor with silver hair and a golden tongue was by turns defiant and disarming, depicting himself as a loyal friend ("Man, I spent my life helping people, friends and enemies") and an absent-minded administrator ("I'm not a detail person"). Playing to the jury with the verve of a fiddler at a fais- dodo, the son of a Cajun sharecropper provoked chuckles from his courtroom claque, exasperation from the judge and testy objections from the federal prosecutor. Whether or not the jury finds his protestations persuasive when they begin deliberating later this week, Edwards' performance made fine theater in a state where politics is prized as a form of entertainment and where food, festivals and elected officials are all expected to be full of spice.

Along with seven associates, including his brother, Edwards is charged in connection with a scheme to obtain state "certificates of need" for hospitals and nursing homes during the interregnum between his second and third terms and then sell them to legitimate corporations for millions of dollars. The case has become less a dispute over facts than a collision of political cultures. Edwards freely allows that he reaped nearly $2 million from the deals for maybe half an hour's work. He was unable to cite anything palpable that he had done to earn the money, saying only that he was "a lawyer's lawyer, a door opener." He denied, however, that there was anything illegal about profiting from his connections and influence. When U.S. Attorney John Volz pressed him about the bonanza from one sale, the Governor joyfully replied, "All of a sudden -- boom! We hit the jackpot. It was a happy day at home."

The sparring between Volz and Edwards was at times hotter than a dash of Tabasco. "You issued subpoenas by the sackload, and we hauled documents in here by the truckload," the Governor bristled, "and you have not produced a single witness or a solitary piece of evidence to contradict what I've said!" When Volz harped on Edwards' omission of the hospital deals on two financial disclosure forms, the Governor claimed that he had simply failed to mention it to his accountant. "So you forgot!" thundered Volz. "I didn't forget," said Edwards. "That implies a conscious attempt to remember."

To show a motive for the alleged fraud, Volz detailed the Governor's addiction to dice. Edwards was as unrepentant about his gambling habits as he had been about the money he made opening doors. "I don't collect coins," Edwards said. "I don't race horses. I like to gamble." Volz contended that Edwards lost $2 million in Nevada between 1981 and 1984; Edwards insisted that he had not squandered anything near that amount. "If I wasn't under oath," he said, "I'd tell you I won."

When being investigated, Edwards gave 8-to-5 odds that he would not be indicted and 2-to-1 that he would not be convicted if he were. Now that he has lost the first bet, his chance of blowing two is in the hands of a twelve- member jury that after ten weeks of testimony must sort through the intricacies of stock transfers as well as the more riveting tales of crap table exploits.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/New Orleans