TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – According to Danny Butler, his criminal defense attorneys never looked into the circumstances surrounding his check kiting or the way West Alabama Bank and Trust handled the Small Business Administration loan that helped build the grocery store project in Fosters, Ala.

In fact, Butler said, they really did not seem interested in defending him at all.

Butler pleaded guilty to six counts of kiting checks and defrauding the SBA on that Fosters grocery store loan in February 2014 and began serving a 36-month sentence in a federal prison in Talladega, Ala.

Butler testified about his experience with the lawyers during a May 22 bankruptcy hearing and expanded on his testimony during exclusive interviews with CU Times on June 5 and 8.

When asked during the May 22 hearing about whether his former criminal attorneys, Max Pulliam and Stephen Shaw of Birmingham, Ala., had advised him to plead guilty to the charges he faced, Butler told the court that he believed Pulliam's only plan was him pleading guilty.

“I didn't even really think he even worked on the case if you want to know the truth about it all,” Butler said, adding that Pulliam had been inactive through most of the case.

“[H]e [Pulliam] never did call a witness, never did nothing on the case,” Butler said. “And I would always ask, 'When are you going to start looking at it?' for him to keep on looking at it. Then, at the very last, three weeks before that, he brought me in there and said [to] me and Steve, just think, we ought to plead guilty to this and go to [Assistant U.S. Attorney George Martin] and see what we can get, you know.”

Court records show Pulliam and Shaw sought letters from Butler's friends and business associates for the judge seeking a lighter sentence; however, Butler has since discharged both attorneys.

Butler acknowledged in his testimony that he understood pleading guilty meant he waived his right to a trial. He also said he understood that the U.S. attorney would recommend to the court what his sentence should be. However, Butler testified that Pulliam had never told him the judge did not have to follow the U.S. attorney's recommendation and could give him a stiffer sentence.

“I didn't know that at the time until I got up there,” Butler said in the transcript. Butler explained to the court that he pleaded guilty in the case because he was guilty of some things in the indictment, but not others.

“There [were] some things on that document that I did do; you know what I mean.” Butler said in the hearing. “And I admitted to that. And there [were] some things I didn't do. And I tried to – there's no way I knew that bank knew that loan was bad.”

Butler later explained in an interview that he always believed something was wrong with the loan, because he approached WABT with the news that the initial loan amount wouldn't be enough to carry the project to completion before the SBA funded its part of the project.

“They should have helped me keep get[ting] the job done,” Butler said. “And they knew I was running out of money and the whole thing would have to stop, but they didn't stop.”

He also said the way the bank reacted when he tried to remove Turnipseed Construction as the general contractor for the grocery store was a bad sign.

Butler said in a later interview that he had hired Clif Turnipseed, a noted local homebuilder, as a consultant on the first part of the project, in particular for his help in choosing subcontractors, but certainly not as the general contractor – though he had wanted to do so.

In a later interview, Turnipseed reported that he had spent most of his project consulting time meeting with representatives from area utilities on infrastructure changes that would be required to support the project, and on the search for a grocery provider who would agree to stock the store.

However, Butler testified that when he later found out WABT continued to list Turnipseed Construction as the general contractor and tried to have him removed, WABT executive Charles “Tab” Swann declined.

“So Clif [came] to me, and I went to Tab and them and told them that I'm going to have to bow out with Clif, we're going to have to get another one,” Butler said in the transcript. “And he told me, no, we can't do that because if we did we would have to redo the whole SBA loan, and that would set it back, the project way back, because it takes a long time to do an SBA loan.”

Read more: Butler said he was scared into pleading guilty …

Butler recounted in a later interview how Pulliam scared him into pleading guilty.

“What was I supposed to do?” Butler asked in a later interview. “It was a 51-count indictment and he [Pulliam] told me I had to beat every single one of them and if George beat me on even just one of them he could put me away for a long time!”

Butler also said Pulliam never told him he could have had a trial by judge and not jury, or that a trial would have allowed him to call witnesses and cross-examine prosecution witnesses to reveal the involvement of others in the situation.

Further, Butler testified that he had financed Pulliam's bill by borrowing the money from his equity line and, at least initially, by obtaining a loan from Chris Hayslip, the brother of Alabama One Credit Union's chief counsel, Vic Hayslip, backed by the furniture in his home. Butler testified that Chris Hayslip loaned him $50,000 to help pay Pulliam's bill and that he repaid Chris Hayslip $56,000.

In bankruptcy documents, Butler listed both Pulliam and Shaw as creditors for attorney's fees, with each seeking more than $25,000.

Butler also recounted at least one meeting he attended at Pulliam's office in Birmingham with Vic Hayslip, where the discussion centered on the Fosters grocery SBA loan and WABT's part in it. However, Butler testified and then reiterated in a later interview that no one had made clear to him that Pulliam was his lawyer while Hayslip worked for Alabama One, that there might be a conflict between those two interests, and that Pulliam should have had his interests as his primary concern.

Butler testified that the lawyers made him feel that cooperating with Hayslip on Alabama One's agenda would be best for his situation.

According to the transcript, Butler testified that Pulliam only visited him once while in prison and that he had stayed about half an hour.

“He was here about 30 minutes and then we made some small talk about, you know, he was telling me that we need to – wanted to know where I stood [on] everything and how I feel about the situation,” Butler testified. “I said I just, you know, I feel like I need to get out of this, you know, the best way I can. And he said well, you're up here on the top. You don't want to say nothing or do nothing because if you do they could do more to you and then you'll stay here longer.”

Butler made it clear he understood Pulliam warned him not to make his situation worse by speaking out about what had landed him in prison.

Perhaps most poignantly, in a later interview Butler recounted how, after the judge sentenced him, Pulliam did not even call him and instead Butler called Pulliam – to thank him.

“I told him I knew he did the best he could and not to feel too bad about it,” Butler said. “But now I guess he really didn't feel all that bad at all.”

Neither Pulliam nor Shaw have responded to requests for comment about Butler's defense.

Instant Insights /

Butler: My Defense Attorneys Failed to Investigate

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