John Wiley Price Federal Corruption Trial Delayed Until February
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
Dallas (CBSDFW.COM) - Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price's federal trial won't start until next year.
A U.S. District Judge moved Price's trial to February 2017. It was set for September, but attorneys for Price and two other defendants, argued that they needed more time to go through the government's enormous volume of evidence.
Former federal prosecutor Matt Orwig says there are over a billion pages of documents to review.
"The government has had many years and a lot of resources to be looking at this, so they have had that multi year head start. So now the defense attorneys need a change to process that information to provide a defense," said Orwig.
He says Judge Barbara Lynn is a fair judge and wouldn't have pushed the trial back unless it was warranted.
"It's compelling when you consider the large volume of documents and the amount of work that the defense attorneys need to do to get caught up to where the government is at this point. So it's a matter of fairness."
Price is accused of taking more than $900,000 in bribes in exchange for Dallas County contracts. Price pleaded not guilty after being indicted in 2014.
FBI agents served search warrants on Price in June 2011.
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
