How Video Front LoadiHow Video Front Loading lost the judgement

On April Fools Day, 1984, two players in Las Vegas were arrested at the Marina Casino for using a concealed video camera to peek at the dealer’s hole card. This device was yet another of Keith Taft’s inventions. One player, Keith’s brother Ted, wore the miniature camera in his belt buckle, while the other player, Rodney Weatherford, a Lockheed Engineer, sat in the casino parking lot in the cab of a dump truck that had been fitted with a satellite receiving dish. Rodney’s job was to watch the video images picked up by the table-top-Ievel camera, in order to electronically signal Ted at the table with the value of the dealer’s hole card.

Here’s what happened on the court trial: For a few days, the prosecution paraded before the judge and jury all of the electronics, the video tapes, and the communication devices. They even took everyone down to the courthouse garage to examine the old truck with the satellite receiving dish in it. And this was a 1984 satellite dish, nothing like your home model Direct-TV dish today. It was huge! It looked like a battleship radar scanner!

Keith was undeniably brilliant. He was the classic mad scientist, inventing in his basement laboratory high-tech devices the likes of which James Bond would be proud to own. He just wanted to take as much money out of the casinos as he possibly could by any legal means. Remember, there were no anti-device laws at that time, and the Einbinderl Dalben decision that legitimized front-loading as a legal strategy in Nevada had already been rendered. Also, Keith’s concealable "David" blackjack computers were already legally selling in the stores.

After the prosecution finished presenting the state’s case-and they had all kinds of gambling experts and gaming agents take the stand to describe the way the whole thing worked the defence attorneys had decided not to put either of the defendants on the stand. They had decided to present no witnesses, but to simply present their closing arguments. The attorneys, John Curtas and Stephen Minagil, were the same attorneys who had just successfully represented Einbinder and Dalben.

John Curtas, Ted’s attorney, explained his legal strategy. First of all, he did not see any reason to refute the evidence as presented. In fact, the defendants had done exactly what the prosecution said they had done. So, there was no argument about any of the prosecution’s case. The only argument to be made was that the defendants never committed the crime of cheating according to the Nevada cheating statutes. Why should Curtas and Minagil argue with the gaming agents’ descriptions of the equipment and its usage? The defendants had the law on their side. Curtas had prepared a closing argument in which he intended to acknowledge that the defendants had done exactly what the prosecution had said they had done. Then, he intended to read to the jury all of the Nevada cheating statutes, one at a time, and simply point out that what the defendants in this case had done did not violate a single statute on the books. He was right. Technically, no crime had been committed.

However, before the closing arguments, the attorneys had to meet with the judge in his chambers. When Curtas came back from the judge’s chambers, he was steaming mad. The district court judge, the Honorable Donald Mosley, had asked both sides to give him a briefing on their proposed closing arguments. When Curtas described his closing argument to the judge, the judge told him that he would not allow it. Curtas pled with the judge; he simply wanted to read the law to the jury. The jury, he argued, were not legal experts, and they did not know the wording of the Nevada laws against cheating. According to Curtas, the judge said, "I used to be a blackjack dealer, and I know what cheating is. Your client was cheating."

So now, as the defense had forgone their opportunity to present any witnesses, the case was closed. The only defense Curtas was allowed to present in his closing argument was to inform the jury that the Nevada law books would be available to them in the jury room, and that they had the right to read the law for themselves. The players, needless to say, were convicted of felony cheating.

And the state of Nevada, needless to say, realized that it needed a law that would make the use of such devices illegal in casinos, and it needed this law fast. These players had been railroaded to prison without a fair trial, and the state knew it. There was always a possibility that some jury in a similar case in the future would actually read the law and realize that a defendant accused of using a device to aid him in making decisions at a gaming table violated none of the cheating statutes.