Edward Wedelstedt, his wife and three other codefendants were arraigned today before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of the Northern District of Texas on federal obscenity, racketeering and conspiracy charges stemming from an indictment handed down on March 11.
Wedelstedt is the owner of Goalie Entertainment Holdings, Inc., which has over 100 adult retail locations in the U.S.
"Everyone pleaded not guilty, demanded a jury trial and waived the formal reading of the indictment, which spared everybody a lot of boredom and confusion; nobody would understand it," said Hank Asbill, Wedelstedt's attorney, referring to the 54-page indictment. "The judge had previously set a trial date within the Speedy Trial Act confines – that's 70 days based on the initial appearance of two of the defendants who had previously been arraigned last week, Leroy Moore and Beverly Van Dusen – and so the currently scheduled trial date is May 9."
"I know the government and the five of us are at least in agreement to ask the judge to waive the Speedy Trial Act because of the complex nature of this case," Asbill continued, "and we will timely file a motion to do just that. And if the judge agrees with our joint recommendation, I don't believe the case will be tried until the end of the year or the very beginning of January."
"We were treated very, very well," Wedelstedt noted. "Everything went better than we could have expected, and we were treated with great respect from the minute we got there to the minute it was done, everyone treated us so well."
"It was all very smooth," Asbill agreed. "The marshal service was extremely courteous and respectful. We filled out all the booking forms in advance for the marshal service; they did their photographing and fingerprinting very quickly, and their computer check, and just let the people right back out to walk down and go to court, so nobody was incarcerated at all in connection with this. When you think about the fact that this case has RICO allegations, and we were not only not arrested, we were not required to be in Dallas for 17 days after the indictment, that's a testament to their keeping their promise to make this as easy as they possibly could."
The next step in the process will be discovery of the government's evidence under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
"There's going to be a lot of discovery that's got to be provided by the government, which is one of the reasons we're both asking for the extension," Asbill said. "I'm sure they're not prepared to immediately give us, in some usable form, the millions of pages of documents that have been obtained by searches, subpoenas, etc., in the case. I'm sure there will be some disputes about some of the things that we want, that we really want, that we think they haven't given us, and after they certify that they've given us what they think they owe us, then we'll start filing pre-trial motions in the case, and those will be litigated in due course.
Typical pre-trial motions may include motions to dismiss some or all of the charges, or to sever the trials of one or more defendants from those of the others. The expectation of such motions are another reason Judge Kinkeade might agree to postpone the trial for several months, and to set a schedule for filing the motions, as well as for possible evidentiary hearings and arguments on the motions.
"We'll continue to do our own investigation, legal and factual, etc., and we'll do a lot of pretrial litigation in the case and we'll see where this goes," Asbill predicted.
The whole may be more difficult, however, due to the fact that Ben Vernia, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice who was the lead prosecutor before the grand jury that brought the indictment, announced that he would be retiring from government service at the end of this week, and going into private practice. The case will reportedly now be handled by Steve Grocki.
Also leaving the case will be DOJ Tax Division Attorney Shelly Goldklang, who, along with Vernia, was also involved in last year's indictment of John Kenneth Coil and several other defendants on tax and obscenity violations, all of which ended in guilty pleas to one or more charges. It is unlikely that that will be the result here.
"In the meantime," Asbill assured, "Eddie's going to continue run his business in the legal fashion he has been running it. We're ready to defend this case to the fullest."
