Federal jurors in the child-seduction case against chess grandmaster
Dr. Alex Sherzer heard closing arguments and deliberated for four
hours Wednesday in Mobil e before adjourning for the night.

...........

If convicted, Sherzer could face a prison term of more than four years
and lose his medical license.


...........

Sherzer testified he came to Mobile with a friend during Mardi Gras,
at least partly in an attempt to meet the girl face-to-face. She
failed to show up for a rendezvous in a shopping mall, but Sherzer
bought a cell phone for her before he left, later telling her to hide
it from her mother, with whom she clashed, the printouts show.


*** Uh Oh....he bought the Cell Phone for the girl, and
then instructed her to hide it from her Mother. That has a bad
appearance to it.

It looks like Sherzer's next phone will also be a "Cell" phone-- a
prison cell phone.


............

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Butler told jurors Sherzer "jumped at
the first opportunity to carry out what he intended all along."

In the earlier messages, "he was grooming her, and he was convincing
her, and he was persuading her to have sex with him, and as soon as
she was ready, he was going to," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria
Murphy.

The girl -- whose father died several years earlier and who spoke of
her struggles with bulimia, depression and having been raped -- was
ripe for a "predator" like Sherzer, Murphy said.

"She would've gotten over what he wanted to do to her body, but not
what he wanted to do to her mind," Murphy said.

Butler reminded jurors Sherzer initially found the girl's self-posted
Internet bio while searching for profiles of females between 13 and
19.

"I think we can all agree that runs the gamut between illegal and
barely legal," Butler said.

*** And it is the Prosecutor who admits that Sherzer's actions
are on the cusp of being "barely legal"




Williams pointed out that the search option Sherzer selected lumps all
teenagers into one category, so that "if you're searching for 18- and
19-year-olds, you're going to get 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds."


Hmmm....interesting argument.

...........


Chief U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade gave the jury special
directions on how to decide whether Stabler entrapped Sherzer.

"A person is entrapped when law enforcement officers induce or
persuade that person to commit a crime that the person had no previous
intent to commit," she said, reading from the 16-page jury charge.

"However, there is no entrapment where a defendant is ready and
willing to break the law and the government merely provides what
appears to be a favorable opportunity for the defendant to commit the
crime."

After Granade's instructions, jurors broke for lunch, returning to
begin deliberations around 1 p.m. A little more than three hours
later, they sent a note to the judge asking whether investigators may
induce someone to commit a crime if no crime has been committed prior
to the government's involvement. Granade told them to look again at
copies of the instructions she'd read earlier.


*** Slap! This query by the the jurors is probably good news
for the Sherzer side, since it indicates that they are giving serious
consideration to the entrapment defense.

Also, the longer the jury deliberates, the less likely that it is
to vote for a conviction.

.............

On a wooden bench in the hallway outside the courtroom, some of
Sherzer's supporters passed the time playing chess on a board
belonging to one of his lawyers. Sitting on either side of the set at
one point were Israeli grandmaster Yona Kosashvili and Judit Polgar, a
Hungarian widely considered the best female player in history.

They played at least twice. Both games ended in a draw.


*** WOW! Polgar and Koshashvili travelled quite a ways to
testify on Sherzer's behalf. If Zsofia and Zsuzsa are there, then it
would be a real family reunion.

In general, when character witnesses testify on behalf of a
defendant, does the defendant undertake to pay the travel expenses? If
so, the Sherzers are probably paying a pretty penny.

I would think that you'd have to pay most people, in order to get
them to go to Alabama.

Usually the party who subpoenas the witness has to pay, but if the witness is
more than 100 miles away, they generally have to be deposed in their home
jurisdiction, or a special order of the court would be required to compel them
to appear at trial.