Relief for jailed Dem Gov. Siegelman? - Democratic Underground

flashl

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Sun Sep-09-07 08:26 AM
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Relief for jailed Dem Gov. Siegelman?

Ala. lawyer to be questioned by House panel investigators

Attorneys for a congressional committee will question an Alabama lawyer under oath next week about her claims that a Republican campaign operative talked about White House influence over the investigation of former Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman.

Rainsville attorney Jill Simpson, who was a campaign worker for Republican Bob Riley when he defeated Siegelman in 2002, will be interviewed privately Sept. 14 by two staff attorneys in the office of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, Simpson's attorney, Priscilla Duncan, said Friday.

Duncan said she had been talking to committee staff members for several weeks to set up the interview.

In a letter to Duncan, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said the interview with Simpson would be under oath and would be transcribed. Conyers said the transcript would be confidential initially and that a decision on releasing it would be made later by Republican and Democratic committee leaders.

Conyers said Simpson would be questioned by two people -- a member of the committee's minority staff and a member of committee's majority staff.

I believe Siegelman is at this point because of this effort:

44 Attorneys General Demand an Inquiry Into the Siegelman Prosecution

Today forty-four attorneys general from forty of the fifty states of the Union petition the United States Congress demanding a formal inquiry into the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Governor of Alabama, who was falsely charged, tried and convicted in federal court proceedings in Alabama. These proceedings constitute an indelible stain on the reputation of our nation for justice, which cannot be purged until they are set aside and those who committed these crimes mockingly in the name of justice are held to account for their misconduct.

A Shocking Miscarriage of Justice
The forty-four attorneys general, Democrats and Republicans alike, drawn from across the country point to these badges of injustice in the Siegelman case (my comments in italics):

(1) Governor Siegelman is currently incarcerated at a Bureau of Prisons facility, having been refused release on bail pending appeal. Indeed, he was even denied 45 days to report to prison to give him time to put his affairs in order, an opportunity which is commonly granted. This can only be understood in terms of the political theater orchestrated by the Bush Justice Department and the judge hearing the case, a Republican political activist.

(2) A lawyer who had worked in the campaign of Governor Siegelman’s opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial contest has sworn in a recent affidavit that the spouse of the federal prosecutor in this case stated that his wife and another federal prosecutor would “take care of” Mr. Siegelman and that he had talked with a political operative for the White House concerning such assurances. The name of the political operative is Karl Rove, and the political manipulation of prosecutions to “take care” of political adversaries is his calling card.

(3) In an unrelated but recent case, a low-level employee in another state administration was prosecuted and convicted by another U.S. Attorney before a U.S. Court of Appeals ordered her immediate release from prison and reversed the trial verdict calling the prosecution evidence “beyond thin.”

(4) Another former Governor of Alabama was convicted of corruption charges a few years ago in a case where he personally benefited from his action and was sentenced to probation. That case was handled by the same lead prosecutor as in the Siegelman case. There is a striking difference: the former governor actually secured personal gain from the alleged corruption, Siegelman did not—even accepting the allegations of the prosecution as true, but they are not. How to distinguish these two cases? One involves a Republican, the other a Democrat. This is Bush justice, of the same sort meted out in Bush’s commutation of the sentence of his felonious national security advisor, Scooter Libby.

(5) The sentence sought by the prosecutor in Governor Siegelman’s case–30 years–was excessively disproportionate, and the sentence imposed — 7 years, 4 months — was harsh.

(6) There are numerous apparently legitimate (and arguably compelling) appealable issues in this case, as confirmed by a number of legal scholars. There have been allegations of jury misconduct and the possible introduction of extrinsic evidence into the jury deliberation process that have not been fully investigated. For this reason, and because Governor Siegelman is not in any way a flight risk, the denial of a bond pending appeal appears inappropriate, and the shackling of the Governor in handcuffs and leg irons as he was taken out of the courtroom was shocking.

This is just one more of the breathtaking cases of abuse that has become common.

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DeepModem Mom

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Sun Sep-09-07 10:58 AM
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1. K&R

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trof

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Mon Sep-10-07 07:00 PM
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2. More from truthout:

The Strange Case of an Imprisoned Alabama Governor
By Adam Cohen
The New York Times

Monday 10 September 2007

Alberto Gonzales is out as attorney general, but there is still a lot of questionable Justice Department activity for Congress to sort through. The imprisonment of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, should be at the top of the list. Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer and Republican operative, is heading to Washington this week to tell Congressional investigators that she heard prominent Republicans plotting to use the United States attorneys' offices to remove Mr. Siegelman as a political threat. The case should be the focus of a probing Congressional hearing this fall.

Mr. Siegelman was a major frustration to Alabama Republicans. The state is bright red, but Mr. Siegelman managed to win the governorship in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote. He was defeated for re-election in 2002 under suspicious circumstances. In the initial returns, Mr. Siegelman appeared to have won by a razor-thin margin. But a late-night change in the tallies in Republican Baldwin County gave the current governor, Bob Riley, a victory of a little more than 3,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast.

Mr. Siegelman has charged that the votes were intentionally shifted by a Republican operative. James Gundlach, an Auburn University professor, did a statistical analysis of the returns and found that the final numbers were clearly the result of intentional manipulation. Mr. Siegelman wanted to take back the governorship in 2006, but his indictment made it impossible.

If Ms. Simpson is telling the truth, she provides important support for Mr. Siegelman's claim that his prosecution was political. In a sworn affidavit, she says she was on a phone call in November 2002 with Governor Riley's son, Rob Riley, and Bill Canary, a Republican political operative whose wife, Leura Canary, is the United States attorney for Montgomery. According to Ms. Simpson, they were discussing the political threat Mr. Siegelman posed, and Mr. Canary said his "girls" - his wife and Alice Martin, the United States Attorney in Birmingham - would take care of Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary also said the case had been discussed with Karl Rove.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091007S.shtml

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trof

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Mon Sep-10-07 07:16 PM
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3. K&R

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