The Insider

In any case, the contents of the DeGuerin reading room should be an eye-popper. It will include 54,000 documents and will be supplemented by the tape transcripts. The government has turned over 175 two-hour videotapes and 460 90-minute tapes to the defense. If the tapes were completely filled with conversations, that would work out to over 1,000 hours.

Of course, the tapes are not likely to be completely filled, but someone's going to have to listen to all of them to make sure. The question of what recordings are relevant to the case is likely to remain a point of contention right up until the scheduled March 9 start of the Hotel Six trial.

In another sting development, David Berg and Joel Androphy have withdrawn as lawyers for former councilman John Peavy Jr.. According to Berg, scheduling conflicts made it impossible for him and Androphy to conform to Hittner's dictum that all of the Hotel Six's attorneys had to be available for the March start of the trial.

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