Panel of Judges Overturns Denny McLain Conviction

ATLANTA —  A lawyer for Denny McLain said he hopes baseball’s last 30-game winner will be out of prison within 10 days after a three-judge panel threw out his racketeering conviction Friday.

“Come Monday, we’re going to ask the judge to set a bail bond for him,” said attorney Arnold Levine of Tampa, Fla. “The mechanics may take a week to 10 days. We hope to have him out very quickly. He’s anxious to come back to his family.”

Levine, who phoned McLain at a federal prison in Talladega, Ala., said, “He was thrilled; he started to cry. His immediate reaction was, ‘Hey, I’ve got to call my wife.’ ”

The ruling by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals entitles McLain to a new trial on charges he was part of a loan-sharking scheme and threatened violence to collect debts.

Levine said he hopes the charges simply will be dropped, citing the 29 months McLain already has served and the expense of repeating a trial that took four months.

Tony Zitek, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Tampa, said the office will review Friday’s ruling before deciding whether to take action, which could include seeking a new trial or appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McLain, 42, was sentenced to 23 years for racketeering, extortion, conspiracy and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.

The appeals court threw out all those convictions, as well as the racketeering, conspiracy and extortion convictions against co-defendant Seymour Sher.

The 11th Circuit Court said U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich unfairly rushed McLain’s 1984 trial in Tampa. The appeals court also faulted the trial prosecutor for insulting a defense lawyer in front of the jury.

McLain’s best year in the major leagues was 1968, when he went 31-6 with a 1.98 earned-run average with the Detroit Tigers. He won the Cy Young Award as the American League’s top pitcher and the Tigers won the World Series.

He won the Cy Young Award again in 1969 with a 24-9 record, but his career then nose-dived. He was suspended for disciplinary reasons for part of the 1970 season and compiled a record of 17-34 from 1970 through 1972 with Detroit, Washington, Oakland and Atlanta, finishing his 10-year career at 131-91.

In 1984, he was among seven people indicted in an alleged loan-sharking and cocaine-smuggling scheme.

After a mistrial, McLain and Sher were convicted in a four-month trial in late 1984 and early 1985. McLain went to prison on March 16, 1985.

Defense lawyers told the 11th Circuit Court in January that the Tampa trial was a “circus,” during which Kovachevich often dozed or worked on other cases and allowed jurors to walk around drinking coffee and eating doughnuts during testimony.

The three-judge appeals panel’s unanimous opinion also noted the judge’s repeated warnings to attorneys to hurry and said, “The trial judge’s efforts to speed up the pace not only rushed the attorneys, but also allowed the proceedings to get out of hand.”

The court said the hurried proceedings, combined with repeated statements by the prosecutor questioning the honesty of a defense lawyer, made the trial unfair.

A third defendant in the case was convicted separately, three others pleaded guilty to a cocaine charge and one was acquitted.

Prosecutors claimed McLain was part of a loan-sharking operation that charged interest rates of 130%, used threats to collect and booked high-stakes bets on professional and college football and basketball games.

He also was accused of possessing 29 pounds of cocaine and plotting to smuggle 880 pounds of cocaine from Colombia, although he was found innocent of a conspiracy-to-smuggle charge.

At his sentencing, McLain said he was not a criminal. He said he was “guilty of greed, avarice (and) bad judgment” and said, “At times, I’ve tried to make a fast buck.”