Rules of the Game
On May 29, 1979, “Maximum John” Wood, the presiding judge in Chagra’s trial, was shot in the back and killed in San Antonio. “Chagra’s case was…declared a mistrial, the defendant went free, and young Oscar Goodman’s reputation was made in the bargain.” Charles Harrelson was sentenced to life in prison. But “admissible evidence that a hit had been authorized?” McManus told us with studied vagueness. “None.”
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Goodman had been Ted Binion’s lawyer, and once upon a time he’d been Tony Spilotro’s. A famous hit man from Chicago, Spilotro attended the bat mitzvah of Goodman’s daughter, and Goodman was heard to say that he’d rather have her date him than some FBI agent. The mob had sent Spilotro to Las Vegas to keep the casinos in line; he made such a mess of that assignment that in 1986 he and his brother were bludgeoned to within an inch of their lives, then buried alive in an Indiana cornfield. The story was told in Nicholas Pileggi’s Casino, and when Martin Scorsese turned the book into a movie, Oscar Goodman showed up playing himself.
Didn’t you make sure there were no guarantees anything was true? I asked.
The genius of American democracy is that it can ask courts and commissions to make choices legislators don’t have the guts to make. The same Journal editorial also took the court to task for remanding instead of settling a case dealing with the free speech rights of corporations. The Journal showed much more sympathy for Nike, the defendant in this case, than for John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, the gay men Texas arrested, convicted, and fined $200.
Bully Boys
