Rove Racket Victim Sues Ex-U.S. Attorney in Mississippi

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. and his wife are suing former U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton of the Southern District of Mississippi for invasion of privacy and last month they won a major decision in the case.

Lampton became a high priest in the Rove Republican Racket after he had targeted and prosecuted Diaz not once but twice, and lost both times. Diaz, a prominent Democrat, has since sought justice against Lampton personal vendetta against him.

Coincidentally, Lampton was going to be fired by the Bush administration in 2005 but saved his scalp when he started targeting and prosecuting Democrats.

In this case, after losing both trials, Lampton foolishly handed over Diaz's confidential and personal income taxes to a state commission, where Lampton's cousin worked.

The Sun Herald reports:

Dunn Lampton’s former position as a U.S. attorney does not give him immunity from a lawsuit in which former state Supreme Court Judge Oliver Diaz Jr. and his wife, Jennifer, accuse Lampton of invading their privacy and disclosing confidential information, a federal judge has ruled. “The times that someone has been allowed to sue a U.S. attorney in the history of the United States are extremely rare, and this is one of them,” Diaz said Thursday. Dunn Lampton had asked that the lawsuit against him be thrown out because federal prosecutors have immunity from prosecution. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan denied his request. Jordan found a criminal investigation of Diaz had ended, and Lampton was acting outside the scope of his prosecutor’s job, when the alleged misdeeds occurred.

[After losing his criminal case against Diaz,] Lampton then filed a complaint against Diaz with the state’s Judicial Performance Commission. The Diazes allege he gave the commission confidential tax records the U.S. Attorney’s Office had secured during the criminal investigation. Leslie Lampton, Dunn Lampton’s cousin, served on the commission and was involved in the investigation. When the Diazes learned the commission had their tax records, they requested the documents be returned. Commission attorney Darlene Ballard instead sent the records back to Lampton. The commission complaint against the Diazes was dismissed in December 2008.

“In the present case, (Dunn) Lampton provided the tax records to the commission after Diaz was acquitted,” Jordan wrote in his order. “The prosecution was over; the conduct was neither part of his prosecutorial function nor part of his role as an advocate.”

Mississippi Judge Gives Rove Racket the Finger

The Rove Republican Racket is stronger than ever in Mississippi. And they are embittered as ever.

Last week, Judge Larry Buffington, a Democrat aligned with former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr., bluntly told the Racket and its goons to "move on," politely giving them the finger.

Readers may recall that former Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. was a siting judge who was dragged through the Mississippi mud and brought to trial twice by the Rove Republican Racket. Diaz was acquitted twice. Sadly, he lost re-election after the Racket smeared his good name.

Last year, Buffington helped Diaz get a low-paying job that will help Diaz qualify for a state pension. He was a year short of qualifying.

The Racket went after Buffington, leaking the appointment. Buffington tried to find out who leaked the information, issuing subpoenas, and a Republican stooge filed a complaint since it was beyond Buffington's authority to do so.

At the end, Buffington was slapped on the hand and will probably be fined $100. The Jackson Clarion Ledger reports:

The Commission on Judicial Performance said Thursday it found Buffington lacked authority to command Supervisors Pete Lowery and Randy Moore to appear before him to answer questions about who leaked to the media his appointment of a former state justice as a Simpson County Youth Court public defender. "Judge Buffington admitted that he had failed to comply with the law when issuing the subpoenas, but did not care," the commission report said. The commission is recommending to the state Supreme Court that Buffington be assessed $100 court cost with the reprimand.The state's highest court has ultimate say on punishment for judges. Reached Thursday evening via phone, Buffington said of the commission's recommendation: "It's fair. It's time to conclude this and move on." In January 2009, Buffington ordered the Simpson County Board of Supervisors to hire Oliver Diaz Jr. as a Youth Court public defender at $400 a month, plus state retirement.

Only God can Save the Innocent

Although we have seen examples of prosecutorial misconduct by the Rove Republican Racket based on political vengence and opportunism, one experienced law enforcement officer writes that much of the cases surrounding prosecutorial misconduct arise out of shoddy investigations and unreliable eyewitnesses.

Sunil Dutta (pictured) is a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department. He also holds a PhD and entered the police force after working as a scientist and researcher.

In an opinion piece for the Christian Science Monitor, Dutta writes:

Major harm could result from our reliance on two very fallible tools: eyewitnesses and shoddy forensic science.  Consider a recent example: On Feb. 17, 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for the arson deaths of his three daughters. In September, an investigative article in The New Yorker revealed that Mr. Willingham was innocent. It sparked a series of investigations that found he was the victim of shoddy crime scene investigation and outdated theories.

In 2006, when the Rove-Bush-Cheney administration fired nine U.S. Attorneys, the political masters struck the drums: go after Democratic fundraisers, Democratic boosters, Democratic political operatives, and Democratic governors.

Although Dutta writes of police departments, his observations can be applied to U.S. Attorney offices during the Rove years:

Aside from the fallibility of eyewitnesses, our political model of control over the police can lead to inadvertent mistakes. Municipal police departments dance to the tune of their political masters who thrive on the constant drumbeat of "tough on crime" rhetoric. The only evidence that police can measure to tout our tough-on-crime rhetoric is increasing the number of arrests and reducing crime rates.

This pressure to be productive, the lack of personnel and time, and the desire to wrap up an incident, combined with the unreliability of eyewitnesses, increases the odds that an innocent person may be arrested, or worse, convicted. Add to this our system that rates prosecutorial performance on conviction rates and we are on a slippery slope. And when corrupt prosecutors who present false evidence, even in death penalty cases, such as the now disbarred Arizona prosecutor Kenneth Peasley, enter the mix, only God can save the innocent.

It is obvious that the political pressure to be "tough on corruption" by the Rove-Bush Administration led many U.S. Attorney offices to target innocent Democrats and to expand the use of the dishonest "honest services" statute.

Read the full column here.

Diaz Fights Back

The Rove Republican Racket went after Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz not once, but twice. And they lost both times.

Diaz is now fighting back. He was in Washington DC yesterday.

The Jackson Clarion Ledger writes:

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. called on Congress and the Obama administration Friday to step up investigations into what he called "political prosecutions" by the U.S. Justice Department. "There are political prosecutions that have gone on around the country," Diaz said. "Innocent men are sitting in federal prisons. ...It's time for us to do something." Diaz was acquitted of corruption charges in a 2005 federal trial and later on federal tax evasion charges. He joined other targets of recent federal investigations, along with their families and attorneys, at a forum in Washington to press for action against "selective investigations" by federal prosecutors under the Bush administration.

Let's see how U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Congress react.

Read the full article here.