The situation was further complicated by an implication that Mose Jefferson needed to obtain a new lawyer, in that Arthur "Buddy" Lemann, according to U.S. attorney Daniel Friel, faced a conflict of interest in having once represented Stacy Simms, daughter of Ellenese Brooks-Simms.
Brenda Jefferson Foster had entered a guilty plea in the racketeering case and obtained a promise of leniency in exchange for agreeing to testify against her siblings.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten claimed to be "not surprised to see that again" in reference to Lemann's having made allegations of prosecutorial political or racial bias when defending former mayor Marc Morial's administrator Kerry DeCay, who was convicted and spent 9 years in federal incarceration.
Fawer and Lemann both asked Moore to declare Mose Jefferson indigent because a building he owns on New Orleans' Loyola Avenue was put on hold by U.S. attorney Jim Letten.
Fawer and Lemann had intended to use the building as a "means of obtaining payment for their services"; but Moore, on August 6, 2009, cited that Mose Jefferson owns a New Orleans East house which he used as collateral for his bond pending trial.
[15] At a hearing before U.S. District Judge Ivan L. R. Lemelle on June 17, 2009, lawyers for Betty Jefferson and Angela Coleman requested a delay from the August 3, 2009, start date for the racketeering trial; at the same hearing, however, lawyers for Gill Pratt and Mose Jefferson requested that the racketeering trial begin as scheduled on August 3.
[16] During the ensuing week, on June 26, 2009, U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon denied Mose Jefferson's request to delay the start of the bribery case also involving Gill Pratt and Ellenese Brooks-Simms.
[21] Jury selection for Mose Jefferson's trial on charges of bribery began on August 10, 2009, with Fawer again requesting a venue change and Lemmon again denying it.
[22] The bribery trial per se began on August 11 at 10:00 AM CDT, with strikingly different perspectives between the prosecution and the defense on the $140,000 which Mose Jefferson gave to Ellenese Brooks-Simms.
[25] On August 19, 2009, former Orleans Parish schools superintendent Tony Amato testified in support of the "I CAN LEARN" program, but most of the testimony on that day centered on the nature of the relationship between Mose Jefferson and Brooks-Simms.
[26] Before the case went to the jury on August 20, 2009, the defense called Livingston as witness, in an attempt to analogize the lobbying activities of the Livingston Group to the involvements of Mose Jefferson,[27] Fawer's repeated arguments that the $140,000 payment could only be a gift in that adoption of I CAN LEARN already had Brooks-Simms' support as well as that of the other voting members of the school system, but Fawer's observations of the time of the payment and the prior day's testimony by Amato were "sideshows" when "This case is about payoffs and rewards" according to federal prosecutor Sal Perricone.