Since the New York Times was not paying me at the time to cover that trial in Montgomery, I’ve only learned of the dynamite charge from interviewing eye witnesses and lawyers during the sentencing – when I was operating with the support of The Nation Institute and my own blog ad money.

In my news reporting career covering courthouses, we’ve always called it a “dynamite” charge when it was issued as a final straw from the judge to either “try one more time” to reach a verdict – or hang once and for all and hand the judge a mistrial. It’s kind of hard to check since we still don’t have a transcript, but…

An Allen Charge is a legal term for what you are talking about based on some precedent I’m not immediately familiar with, although I’m sure a quick Google search or a look at Wikipedia would turn up the answer pretty quickly.

I’m no lawyer, but I’ve covered enough cases to know that a judge has considerable power in a courtroom, a fact that seems to be lost on the Newhouse news staff in Alabama, at least in this case.

Fuller is not just “A” federal judge, he is THE “Chief” and presiding judge in Montgomery. I recall exactly one story in the News that identified him as “Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller.” And it was a Kim Chandler story if I am not mistaken, a day or two after I had used that in a story myself on this news Website. A Lexus search could confirm that.

Sources want me to do a story on the marble system for how judges are assigned to cases in Montgomery. But I figure it’s a moot point. The presiding judge can assign himself any case he wants. And this was the highest profile case of them all, a case pushed at the highest levels of government in Bush’s Washington – and Riley’s Montgomery.

In other words, this is no accident!