MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - The death of a gambling expert who assisted the Alabama attorney general’s office for the last decade could delay a trial over the state’s raid of VictoryLand casino.
A judge had scheduled a trial June 23 on whether the state could keep more than $223,000 in cash and destroy 1,615 machines seized in the raid in Shorter in February 2013.
Now the attorney general’s office is asking for a three-month delay because its gambling expert, Robert “Bob” Sertell of Vineland, N.J., died May 6 from cardiac problems, and the office needs time to find a new expert to evaluate the seized machines.
Circuit Judge William Shashy will decide whether to grant the delay.
Sertell, who was 71 when he died, had appeared in court as a gambling expert for the Alabama attorney general’s office since at least 2004, when he testified about machines seized in a raid in Troy.
Joy Patterson, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Luther Strange, said Sertell will be missed.
“Bob served as a gambling expert in hundreds of cases and investigations throughout the nation. The Alabama Supreme Court extensively quoted his testimony in many of its landmark decisions where the state prevailed in cases involving illegal gambling,” she said.
Sertell, often called “Father Slots,” was assistant director of Atlantic Community College’s Casino Career Institute before turning to training federal and state investigators and testifying as an expert witness for prosecutors in gambling cases.
VictoryLand, 15 miles east of Montgomery, once operated Alabama’s largest casino, but it has been closed since the raid last year. VictoryLand continues to offer betting on simulcast horse and dog races.
VictoryLand has its own experts who contend the machines seized by the attorney general legally play bingo electronically. The attorney general contends the machines don’t meet bingo requirements outlined by the state Supreme Court.
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