Most of Richard Scrushy's defense team flew home for the weekend Friday night and skipped the hung jury celebration on the Southside of Birmingham. Only Donald Watkins showed up at Lou's Pub to down a few Heineken's and field questions from reporters.

Jurors in the case went home dejected and split. Presumably, the prosecution team went home disappointed to cry in thier milk, with cookies of course.

No amount of questioning could shake Watkins in his belief that the jury will come back next week and reconsider one more time and decide to turn its deadlock on all counts into reasonable doubt with a final vote of acquittal.

While most courtroom observers seem to have no idea how many on the jury are holding out for a guilty or a not guilty verdict, Watkins did not hesitate.

"I think it's 11 to 1 for acquittal," he told me. "This case was over when the SEC case fell apart and they released Scrushy's assets."

It is hard to tell if he is really serious and knows what he is talking about or is just in the business of trying to spin the story in his favor and potentially effect the outcome - if jurors ignore the judge's order not to read anything about the case during their deliberations. Is it possible that jurors sneak around and watch the TV news, read the newspaper or surf the Net for news about the trial?

Stranger things have happened in my 21 years of experience covering trials. I'm not so sure he's right at this point. If I were betting today, I would put the entire six pack on the jury staying hung.

The New York Times' Simon Romero was the most visible reporter at the pub, working as he sometimes does with a free-lance stringer and a free-lance photographer. Pub patrons have by now become used to the sight of a photographer snapping pictures around the room, although the phenomenon has begun to draw some interesting characters to the place.

Dr. Hugh Cort III, a Birmingham psychiatrist who is running as a Republican for president in 2008, shook hands with the people, soliciting their votes, and harassed reporters to give him some publicity.

Who knows? Maybe we'll start a radio show and make Hannity and Colmes look like dumbass amateurs.

And like anyone with a lot of money and a certain amount of celebrity, even of the infamous kind, Watkins draws an entourage.

I couldn't resist striking up a conversation with a particularly attractive blonde named Christine Butler, the marketing director of a new airline called "Southern Skies."

Its slogan? "Try something a little different."

OK.