VIDEO: Brady Bunch Episode Mirrors Trial of Tea Party Hero

KMOX

After the trial Gladney said his neck problems (and neck brace) were a result of the fight.

​Defense attorney Paul D'Agrosa told Daily RFT yesterday that he couldn't believe his "good fortune" when Kenneth Gladney strolled into court wearing a neck brace Monday.

Gladney, as you'll recall, was the purported victim of a beating back in 2009 during a health-care forum hosted by Congressman Russ Carnahan. Gladney was selling Tea Party swag outside the event when claimed he was beaten at the hands of SEIU union "thugs." 

On Tuesday a St. Louis County jury found D'Agrosa's clients -- SEIU members Elston McCowan and Perry Molens -- not guilty in the misdemeanor assault despite the curious props Gladney has used to solicit sympathy throughout the nearly two-year ordeal.

A few days after the alleged beating, Gladney appeared in a wheelchair at a local Tea Party rally. Yet during the trial he could produce no evidence that he sought medical treatment following the skirmish August 2009. (The same could not be said for McCowan, who was treated for a dislocated shoulder and chipped bone.)

So, when Gladney entered the courtroom this week in a neck brace, D'Agrosa says he could barely believe it and figured jurors would be just as skeptical.

"I told the jury that it reminded me of a Brady Bunch episode," says D'Agrosa. "I knew the reference may have been lost on some younger jurors, but I just couldn't help it. It was uncanny."

Gladney admitted to D'Agrosa in trial that the brace had nothing to do with the fight in 2009. Instead, he said he'd recently a vertebrae procedure for another matter. After the verdict, however, Gladney sung a different tune, telling KMOX he believed his neck problems were "blunt trauma" suffered in the fight.

Here, then, is a short clip from the Brady Bunch episode in question.

​Click here to play.

As St. Louis Activist Hub reports, even right-wing bloggers are now questioning Gladney's "visual props."