A key witness in the Mashpee Wampanoag bribery and extortion trial stopped short of testifying Wednesday that the more than $50,000 paid by an architect to the tribe's chairman were necessary to protect a multimillion-dollar casino contract.
An architect accused of bribing the chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe with $54,000 and luxury gifts to protect his firm's multimillion-dollar casino contract told a Boston federal jury Friday the government's theory of a criminal qui pro quo has a "fatal hole."