Siegelman Accuser Released "Bush-league justice at its most outrageous."

[L. Coyote]

Siegelman Accuser Released
Scott Horton by Dec 21, 2007
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001965


The nation’s highest profile political prosecution just got a little smellier–as if that were possible. U.S. Attorney Leura Canary and her chief prosecutor, Louis Franklin, built their case against Siegelman largely off the testimony of businessman Lanny Young. As Time magazine’s Adam Zagorin recounts, Young came in to the discussions with the Justice Department telling them he had dynamite information linking Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and then-Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to corruption. He also had something quite trivial relating to Governor Siegelman.

But it turns out that the prosecutors didn’t want to hear a word about the big-name Republicans. They only cared about Siegelman. In retrospect, of course, this turns out not to be remotely surprising. Leura Canary’s husband, Bill Canary, was advising both Pryor and Sessions. Indeed, Karl Rove was also involved in the Pryor campaigns. But to eliminate any possibility of things going off the tracks, Ms. Canary assigned her First Assistant U.S. Attorney to handle the plea bargain negotiations. That was Julia Weller, the wife of Christopher Weller, Pryor’s attorney, and a figure close to Senator Sessions as well. Weller signed the plea bargain agreement.

In fact the whole story surrounding Lanny Young provides a clear demonstration of the art of political persecution and how it’s pursued in the Middle District of Alabama.

The facts which came out at Siegelman’s trial failed to link Siegelman himself to any unambiguous criminality, .....

............. Siegelman faced a partisan hit job directed by political hacks and appeared before a hand-selected Republican activist hanging judge. This is Bush-league justice at its most outrageous.

[salin]

1. k &r

I almost missed this one. A kick for anyone else who might have missed it as well.

[druidity33]

2. holy shite Batman!

What an incredibly stinky load this whole Alabama "Justice" system is. Kudos to Horton for keeping on top of this!

K & Freakin' R!

[Ilsa]

3. Siegelman is a political prisoner of the GOP. nt

[FogerRox]

4. KnR ... For this important story.

[TacticalPeek]

5. K & R

:kick:

[progressoid]

6. This story MUST get out of the shadows and into the mainstream

[L. Coyote]

10. "60 Minutes" preparing report on Siegelman case = MAYBE

Will it air??

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3071885

Political Prisoner Don Seigelman: TIME COVER STORY to be Political Prosecutions in Alabama
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1982675

[Botany]

7. Russia had the same system ... it was called Gulags

Don Siegleman should be free right now pending his
appeal for judicial & prosecutor mis-conduct.


I hope Don sues the shit out of Karl Rove.

[go west young man]

8. Welcome to America 2008.

Where kangaroo courts and frontier justice are constantly served up warm! I love stories like these as I can just print them out and store em away for the day when I get called to jury duty. Then just show em to the judge/prosecutor and explain why I would never have anything to do with this so called "justice" system.

[AzDar]

9. Goddamn.

:wow:

[sandyd921]

11. Kick!

Too late to recommend, but it's essential that this story see the light of day! Never thought I'd live to see the day that my country has political prisoners. :cry:

[peacetalksforall]

12. The United States. under Cheney barons believes in prisons and prisoners.

Moslem able bodied men
Moslem women and children
- and NO ONE - NO ONE knows how many are innocent if allowed to face charges of a crime.

Removed from homes and streets in a wipe-out act so that torture methods can be experimented with to see if anyone knows anything.

Flown on jet to all kinds of jails in various countries, including those on islands.

Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorians, Nicaraguans
being picked up and transferred in trucks to prisons - some by air to who knows where.


Our own citizens imprisoned with five and more year sentences that should be only months - while our own government deals in drugs?

White collar convicted criminals whose crimes involved millions/billions of theft from the citizens assigned to resort style prisons compared to others who only deserved near misdemeanor type convictions, but are sent to serious prisons.

Erroneous convictions, withheld evidence prisoners - 25 years of life missing.

AND NOW, political prisoners - not present in prisons because Democrats did it to them, but because of Republican political manipulations and the participation of all their Republican 'friends'.

How much torture?
How much torment?
How many kinds of atrocities not limited to forced and humiliating sex acts?

We are dealing with one sick group of politicians in this country.

THE HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOM! Right?
We will bring honor and integrity to the White House! Right?

[JDPriestly]

13. This is scandalous!!!!

Where is justice in Alabama?

[L. Coyote]

14. PART II. Justice in Mississippi: The Judge’s Dilemma

Justice in Mississippi: The Judge’s Dilemma
Scott Horton - Dec 28, 2007 - http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001999

In the last segment, we started looking at the prosecution of former Mississippi Chancery Court Judge Wes Teel. In the meantime, Judge Teel has gone to prison in Atlanta, Georgia–as the federal judge handling his case continues to fail to act on his application to be free pending appeal. We continue our probe today with a study of some of the very telling events which occurred on the periphery of the case.

Picking the Right Judge
From the analysis I provided in the last installment, it should be obvious that I think the prosecution did not have evidence linking Judge Teel to a crime. So how did the case against Teel ever get to a jury? In my view, most judges would have shut down this entire prosecution at the outset. But not the judge in this case, Henry T. Wingate, a Yale-educated Reagan appointee.

According to Teel—and he was backed up on this point by every criminal lawyer and prosecutor I interviewed in Mississippi—federal prosecutors in Mississippi get to pick the judge before whom they can bring a case. In theory the assignment of cases is random, of course. But the case assignment depends on which judge is available at the time the matter first comes up. Therefore, by picking the day on which an indictment is returned to match the date on which the desired judge is sitting in the desired courthouse, the prosecutor gets to select his judge. Since grand jury proceedings are cloaked in secrecy, we don’t of course know what U.S. Attorney Lampton and his office did. But it’s entirely possible that they waited until Wingate was up to get their indictment returned and thereby insured that the case was assigned to him.

So who is Wingate? .........

[Freddie Stubbs]

15. Did he have a jury trial?

Regardless of the reasons why the Justice Department chose to prosecute this guy, it would appear that they were able to convince 12 jurors to agree that he was a crook.

[Kingofalldems]

16. It would appear you are touting more RW talking points

again.

[Freddie Stubbs]

18. Since when is trial by a jury of your peers a 'RW talking point?'

:shrug:

[LeftishBrit]

17. Well, so did many people whose convictions eventually turned out to be unsound..

in fact, the death penalty was abolished in the UK in the 1960s, partly because several people had been found to have been wrongly convicted after they had already been executed. (Not the only reason for abolition, but a significant one.) Since then, there have been many cases of people who were unjustly convicted of murder and eventually released when new evidence was found (the best known probably being the 'Guildford Four' and 'Birmingham Six').

Not saying that Siegelman is innocent - don't know enough about the case - but just because someone was convicted on jury trial doesn't mean that they *couldn't* have been framed.

[Freddie Stubbs]

19. So, far no has presented any new evidence which would exonerate Siegelman

The only defense has been that other people did the similar things and the prosecutors went after him because he was a Democrat. Even if those things are true they do not change his guilt.

[L. Coyote]

20. He was found guilty of corruption in a case that should not get into a courtroom.

There is no ignoring the fact that the decision to bring a case often ends with innocents convicted. Such is the power of the state to accuse, and the reasons to have some check on that political power are well-illustrated by a governor cleaning toilets in a deep south prison.

More focus is needed on his accuser, now free thanks to a secret deal about who knows what other secrets.

[Freddie Stubbs]

22. Who exaclty has determined that the case should not have gotten to a courtroom?

:shrug:

[L. Coyote]

23. Have you read the Horton blogs on this? They have been visible in this forum.

[Supersedeas]

21. why isn't Congress following up on this!?!

[L. Coyote]

24. This is one of the FIFTY oversight investigations, and is ongoing.

I'm getting the impression that a secret grand jusy is working in the background,
given the quiet in the foreground on some of these DoJ related inquiries.