The former president of the nation's largest diesel fuel retailer was captured on secret recordings making what a judge on Thursday described as "vile, despicable, inflammatory racial epithets" that disparaged "the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio," Oakland, Calif., and the football team his then-boss owns.
Not only did U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier, who is black, reveal for the first time Thursday what had been kept under seal about former Pilot Flying J President Mark Hazelwood, but he also announced that he would let jurors in the ongoing fraud conspiracy case against Hazelwood and three other ex- employees hear the recordings.
That bombshell came late Thursday afternoon and spurred a flurry of reaction from prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case, including questions about whether Hazelwood's co-defendants in the trial should be forced to continue to stand trial alongside him.
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