Battered By Months in Jail, Onetime Billionaire Stanford Says His Defense Is Suffering
Blind in one eye after a jail fight, suffering from other ailments and taking anti-depressants, onetime billionaire R. Allen Stanford is finding it tough to defend the criminal case he is facing over an alleged $7 billion fraud from his cell at the federal detention center in Houston.
Denied bond because he is deemed a flight risk, the Texas financier says his ability to defend the case over a Ponzi scheme he and other executives allegedly ran under the guise of selling certificates of deposit at the Stanford International Bank in Antigua is compromised by his incarceration, reports the Associated Press.
Initially expecting to live in an air-conditioned apartment with his girlfriend, as an earlier ABAJournal.com post notes, he has now been jailed over one year.
With legal fees of some $6 million and counting, having hired and fired lawyers from at least 10 different firms, Stanford says he is running out of document storage space in his cell and complains of having to use a legal pad and a pen instead of a computer with Internet access.
“Two guards watch me like I’m some murderer,” he has said in court. “I’m at the limit of my physical and mental capacity to work in that environment.”
He is now represented by Bob Bennett, who contends that jail conditions are preventing Stanford from preparing properly for trial, the AP article says.
However, it doesn’t appear that Stanford will be getting out anytime soon. His third bid for bond was rejected last week, Reuters reports.
Stanford is scheduled to got to trial in January in federal court in Houston. He and his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “After Federal Judge Bans Counsel Changes, Onetime Billionaire Tells New Lawyer He’s Fired”
ABAJournal.com: “Alleged Ponzi Schemer Tells Judge He Doesn’t Know How His Lawyers Have Billed $6M So Far”
ABAJournal.com: “IG Says SEC Largely Ignored Likely Allen Stanford Ponzi Scheme for a Decade”
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram: “Divided Fort Worth office of SEC was plagued by inaction”
