Kentucky Woman

Sue Schmitz, the former Democratic State Representative of Alabama and grandmother, reported to prison on January 28th. She is serving a 30 month prison term at a minimum-security prison camp for women in Lexington, Kentucky.

Her political crime? Being a Democrat during the Rove Bush Cheney era. What was she convicted of? The silliest of non-crimes: doing little or no work for a nice salary. Problem was her salary was funded in part by federal funds. Karl Rove and friends said, "Gotcha!"

An Important Question from Mississippi

On Sunday night, the Greenwood (Mississippi) Commonwealth newspaper's editorial asked, "Why isn't Peters facing prison, too?"

Ed Peters is the corrupt DA from Mississippi who we affectionately call the "Pied Piper." Pied Piper Peters plays a tune so wonderfully that he worked out a sweet immunity deal with disgraced and embattled U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee of the Northern District of Mississippi. The immunity deal has been sealed tight and the U.S. Department of Justice won't provide details.

The Commonwealth correctly opines:

Why has Ed Peters, who was hired by [Richard] Scruggs and his friends to try to bribe [Judge Bobby] DeLaughter, gotten off so lightly? It was Peters who federal prosecutors say dangled the poisoned fruit -- a lifetime judicial appointment in exchange for a favorable ruling in a multimillion-dollar dispute over legal fees -- in front of DeLaughter. It was Peters who was the go-between, ferrying messages and documents between the judge and the Scruggs team. Yet, the former Hinds County district attorney has been able to skirt prosecution by turning on his onetime protegé. Peters’ only penalty, other than losing his law license, was giving back what was left of the $1 million the Scruggs team had paid him.

“I find it rather odd that the man who got $1 million is out fishing, and Bobby DeLaughter is going to prison,” [DeLaughter's lawyer] said. “At least in Chicago we chase the money.”

So have federal prosecutors in Mississippi, except when it comes to Peters. So far, six plaintiffs’ attorneys, three state judges and a former state auditor have drawn prison time in three judicial bribery cases -- some of them for misdeeds that were a lot less culpable than Peters’.

Why did he get such a sweet deal? That’s a question the feds have yet to answer.

Scalia vs. Headline-Grabbing Prosecutors

The dishonest "honest services" crime is now under scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the last week, the Court agreed to hear three cases involving this "vague law."

The Rove Republican Racket, which has used this bogus "crime" to toss political opponents in jail , created a legal monster.

And one U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (pictured)has had enough.

On Monday, The New York Times wrote:

In February, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that federal prosecutors had developed an unseemly crush on a particularly vague law, one that had “been invoked to impose criminal penalties upon a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.” Justice Scalia was writing to protest the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal from three city officials in Chicago who had been convicted of violating the law, which makes it a crime “to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

If you can make sense of that phrase, you have achieved something that has so far eluded the nation’s appeals courts. “How can the public be expected to know what the statute means when the judges and prosecutors themselves do not know, or must make it up as they go along?” Judge Dennis Jacobs of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, asked in a 2003 dissent.

The “honest services” law, Justice Scalia explained, says that “officeholders and employees owe a duty to act only in the best interests of their constituents and employers.” Carried to its logical extreme, he said, “it would seemingly cover a salaried employee’s phoning in sick to go to a ballgame.”

The bottom line, Justice Scalia said in February, is that the courts have not been able to define what separates “the criminal breaches, conflicts and misstatements from the obnoxious but lawful ones.” The honest services law, [Scalia] said, “invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate C.E.O.’s who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct.”

Read the full article here.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Weak on Sexual Misconduct by Prison Staff

In a new report issued this week, The Washington Post reports that "sexual misconduct by prison staff members with federal inmates doubled over the past eight years."

Under the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration, sexual misconduct in federal prisons truly increased. But what about convictions?

The Post writes, "After studying hundreds of cases of alleged sexual assault, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine concluded that the response of the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been 'mixed' despite changes in the law and vocal efforts to crack down on misconduct. "

The Rove Republican Racket let these prison officials that engaged in sexual misconduct off the hook with a slight slap on the wrist.

The Post states, "Since a change in the law in 2006, the percentage of cases that assistant U.S. attorneys accepted for prosecution has risen by more than 12 percent. In the cases in which criminal charges were filed, 83 out of 90 resulted in convictions. The vast majority of the penalties, however, resulted in sentences of less than one year of prison time under both the older and newer laws. "

Less than one year! What an injustice! The staff of the Bureau of Prisons that engaged in the sexual abuse all should have been treated as rapists and obligated to register as sex offenders.

Read the full article here.