Josh Marshall: "What am I missing?"

[Stoic]

talkingpointsmemo.com

Now, given my focus on public corruption in the last few years, far be it from me to call for leniency on crooked pols. But this strikes me as wildly out of line with the sentences I've seen in the last couple years. For some context, Siegelman was acquitted on 25 counts and convicted on seven. With those charges Siegelman didn't pocket any money himself but rather, in the words of the Times, persuaded a wealthy businessman "to pay $500,000 to retire the debt of a political group that had campaigned to win voter approval for a state lottery."

Compare this to Duke Cunningham, perhaps the most brazen and audacious bribetaker in recent decades. Duke to cash payments from multiple federal contractors in exchange for securing defense contracts. Duke got eight years and four months in prison. Duke pleaded out, which probably took some time off his sentence. But nothing Siegelman was convicted of seems even remotely in Duke's league and yet they want to give him a sentence almost four times as long?

What am I missing?

There are two types of justice in America today. Republican justice and Democratic justice.

[SteppingRazor]

1. It's an unfair comparison, though.

Marshall's comparing what Siegelman might be sentenced to with what Cunningham actually was sentenced to. had Cunningham fought the charges against him instead of pleading out, he could've faced life in prison.

[gratuitous]

3. 25 of 32 charges against Siegelman were tossed

So it seems that he was right to fight against at least some of the charges, as he was found not guilty. Even with standard overlarding of the charges, losing 78% of the indictment looks like prosecutorial overreaching. Sounds like the prosecuting attorney didn't like getting shown up like that, and is looking for the longest possible sentence that can be cobbled together out of the catalog that actually stuck.

According to the NYT story I read, Siegelman was convicted of getting a big donor to retire the $500,000 campaign debt of a PAC organized to pass a ballot measure. That is, none of the $500,000 made its way into Siegelman's pocket (from what I can tell), and there isn't any indication that Siegelman was going to be on the hook personally for the PAC's debts. Those debts have to be taken care of somehow, either being paid by donors or being eaten by the creditors. Making an arrangement to get the debts paid doesn't seem to me to be worth 30 years in the slammer.

[SteppingRazor]

4. I agree. What Siegelman did isn't worth 30 years...

hell, I think a lot of non-violent crimes have ridiculously lengthy sentencing guidelines attached. But that doesn't change my point, that Josh Marshall is comparing apples and oranges. A proper analogy would be to wait and see what Siegelman actually gets sentenced to, and then compare that sentence with what Cunningham received. That's all I'm saying.

[BootinUp]

2. hmmm

trying to understand what he did. I guess its a question of how he persuaded the wealthy businessman. Does sound like the former Gov. is getting the shit end of the stick though.

[MrPrax]

5. ...and different voting

Most suspect of all was the governor’s race in Alabama, where the incumbent Democrat, Don Siegelman, was initially declared the winner. Sometime after midnight, when polling station observers and most staff had gone home, the probate judge responsible for elections in rural Baldwin County suddenly “discovered” that Mr Siegelman had been awarded 7,000 votes too many.

In a tight election, the change was enough to hand victory to his Republican challenger, Bob Riley. County officials talked vaguely of a computer tabulation error, or a lightning strike messing up the machines, but the real reason was never ascertained because the state’s Republican attorney general refused to authorise a recount or any independent ballot inspection.

According to an analysis by James Gundlach, a sociology professor at Auburn University in Alabama, the result in Baldwin County was full of wild deviations from the statistical norms established both by this and preceding elections. And he adds: “There is simply no way that electronic vote counting can produce two sets of results without someone using computer programmes in ways that were not intended. In other words, the fact that two sets of results were reported is sufficient evidence in and of itself that the vote tabulation process was compromised.”

Mick Arran

They screwed him out of an election and now they want him in jail...
Given all the other shit, this guy's 30 year 'crime' looks more like the 'parking fine' category