Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South
By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane - 24 June 2008
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/24/justice-for-sale-how-big-tobacco-teamed-up-with-the-gop-to-crush-democrats-in-the-south/Almost immediately after his appointment as US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi in late 2001, Dunnica Lampton began to investigate key Mississippi Democrats.
Trial lawyer and major Democratic campaign contributor Paul Minor (photo at right) quickly became a target of such an investigation. Minor, one of the largest Democratic donors in the South and the largest in Mississippi, would quickly find himself in the midst of a political firing line.
On July 25, 2003, three months before the Mississippi gubernatorial election, in a case that would stun the legal community, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Paul Minor, former chancery court judge Wes Teel and former circuit court judge John Whitfield were indicted on charges of bribery, relating to loan guarantees that Minor had made to the three judges to help defray campaign costs.
There was no state law prohibiting Minor’s contributions, ...............