SHELNUTT INTERVIEW, PART TWO: DEFENSE LIVED IN SHELNUTT'S HOME

On a secluded, 6-acre lot in the residential neighborhood of Upatoi,
Mark Shelnutt's home was transformed into a 3,600-square-foot
litigation war room.

Facing life in prison on charges of conspiracy to distribute drugs,
bribery, witness tampering and a litany of money laundering
accusations, Shelnutt moved out of his four-bedroom house the week
before his federal trial started in downtown Columbus, and his defense
team of three lawyers, two paralegals and a technical support staffer
moved in. The primary purpose was to save the thousands of dollars it
would take to house and feed the team during what was expected to be
an extended trial.

Lead attorney Thomas Withers and his partner Craig Gillen -- both
former government prosecutors -- had their own bedrooms. The two
paralegals, Nancy Clark out of Gillen's Atlanta office and Robin
Jenkins out of Withers' Savannah office, shared a room. Attorney
Anthony Lake and Daniel Maggioni, a 20-year-old college student there
for technical support, slept in the bunk beds in Shelnutt's teenage
son's room.

Withers and Lake worked late into the night, while Gillen, a
self-described morning person, rose between 4 and 5 a.m. to prepare
for the day ahead.

Gillen brought an impressive resume to Columbus, having been deputy
independent counsel during the Iran/Contra investigation in the early
1990s. He was lead government prosecutor in bringing indictments
against high-ranking government officials, including former Secretary
of State Casper Weinberger.

With boxes of evidence, transcripts and other material flowing in and
out of the house, the living arrangements had a collateral effect,
said Shelnutt and his team. The group bonded and adopted an
"us-against-the-world" bunker mentality.

"It was like a college dormitory," Shelnutt said in a Friday morning
interview, after the team worked together to get him exonerated
Wednesday on the 36 counts that remained after U.S. District Court
Judge Clay Land dismissed four of the counts for lack of evidence.
Shelnutt said he spent about $300,000 on his legal defense, but
declined to say how much of that went to the firm of Gillen, Withers &
Lake.

The defense team lived there together for 14 days. Clark cooked the
meals, many of them Southern-style menus with pork chops, rice and
gravy.

They ate around Shelnutt's dinner table, family style. They had
desserts -- cakes and pies -- brought in by friends and supporters.

Withers, a lanky man, raised in Buckhead and now living and practicing
law in Savannah, said he usually loses weight during an extensive trial.

Not this time.

"I gained one pound during this one," he said.

When members of the defense team needed seclusion, they would retreat
to a small lake about 125 yards behind Shelnutt's home.

"A beautiful lake," Withers said.

That lake provided a peaceful soundtrack before the team would leave
each morning for the 25-minute drive to the courthouse.

"Every morning when we were loading the boxes into the car," Withers
said, "you could hear the geese."

The government built its case against Shelnutt around Torrance Hill, a
former Shelnutt client and the "biggest drug dealer Columbus had ever
seen," according to lead prosecutor Carlton Bourne Jr.

As the prosecution used Hill, his ex-wife Tamika Hill, his girlfriend
Latea Davis, his cousin Choici Lawrence and former drug lieutenant
Shawn Bunkley in an attempt to show Shelnutt's guilt, the defense
countered in an effective way.

Using more than 2,000 phone calls made by Torrance Hill -- known on the
street as "Bookie" -- the defense aggressively challenged Hill's testimony.

All of the recorded conversations were made from jails -- either in
Muscogee County or Crisp County -- and provided 450 hours of insight
into Hill.

And one of those calls was the first clear signal the United States of
America's case against Shelnutt was falling apart.

Torrance Hill, the star witness against Shelnutt, was testifying on
the third day of the trial. In an orange-and-white-striped Harris
County jail outfit, his legs shackled with irons, Hill was telling the
jury about Shelnutt, his former lawyer.

During cross examination, Withers introduced a tape into evidence. It
was recorded in the spring of 2008 while Hill, already sentenced to
federal prison by Judge Land, was in the Crisp County jail.

As soon as the recording started to play, Bourne popped up from the
defense table and asked Withers where he got it.

Withers responded matter-of-factly: "I got it from the
government."

If Withers' punch had come in a boxing ring instead of a courtroom,
Bourne would have been flat on the canvas.

In the courtroom, Bourne's reaction was more subtle. He just sat
down.

Two days after the trial was over, Withers made an
observation.

"It was clear," he said, that "the government had not listened to the
Crisp County tapes."

Joseph Newman, first assistant U.S. attorney out of the Southern
District of Georgia, supervised the case.

He declined on Friday to discuss in detail how the government handled
it.

"We're not going to go beyond Mr. Bourne's statement," Newman said.
Then he repeated what Bourne said when he left the courthouse last
week: "Both sides worked hard. The jury worked hard in going over the
case. We accept the verdict."

On those jailhouse Crisp County recordings, made in the spring of
2008, Hill had candid conversations with his mother and girlfriend,
Latea Davis. Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration
and FBI were pressing Hill to provide information damning to Shelnutt.
Hill was sentenced in early 2007 to 24 1/2 years in federal prison.
For his cooperation in the case against Shelnutt, law enforcement
offered the possibility Hill could have time cut off that sentence.

But on the Crisp County tapes, secretly recorded by the government,
Hill dramatically tells his own mother: "That man (Shelnutt) ain't
done nothing wrong."

The defense team got those recordings in discovery about two months
before the trial began. There were 500 calls from Crisp County, on top
of more than 1,500 calls by Hill from the Muscogee County Jail from
February 2006 to February 2007, when Hill was awaiting trial.

All told, it was more than 450 hours of material on Hill, his family
and his enterprise.

"Everybody in our office listened to tape," Gillen said. "Tom Withers
spent an enormous amount of time with the tape, months and months,
70-80 hours a week."

And they would go hours without finding anything usable on the
recordings.

"It is like picking meat off a crab," Gillen said. "It's real hard
work. It takes a long time. But if you get a nice piece of meat, it's
worth it."

When they found the meat, it was Maggioni's job to process
it.

A high school valedictorian with a 3.79 GPA in the honors program at
the University of Georgia, Maggioni became the keeper of the
recordings. A friend of Withers' son, Maggioni was available because
he was taking a semester break for health reasons.

Hundreds of hours of Hill conversations were boiled down to about 310
"material calls." A database and spreadsheet were built on those calls.

"The rule is I don't take anything into the courtroom if I can't put
my hands on it in 10 seconds," Withers said,

And Withers wanted those conversations readily available.

"It was affirmative evidence Mark Shelnutt was innocent," he
said.

Maggioni, the only non-attorney sitting at the defense table, worked a
laptop, calling up recordings time and again at Withers' demand.

Maggioni became an expert on Torrance Hill and knew more about the
drug dealer than the prosecutors who built a case around him.

"Daniel knew more about Torrance Hill than they did," Withers
said.

An accounting major, Maggioni said he now might change his career
direction.

"I think we hatched another lawyer," Gillen said.

And they helped another, Shelnutt, retain his law license and ability
to practice his trade.

When Land read the verdict Thursday afternoon, Shelnutt was crying,
but he was not alone.

"A lot of our team sitting at that table had tears after that
verdict," Withers said. "Every one of us was passionate in our belief
in Mark's innocence."