Alabama's New Race War

If there is one thing the Rove Republican Racket  hates worse than prominent Democrats are economically independent African-Americans.

In backwards Alabama, Republican Governor Bob Riley has teamed up with the Republican-packed Alabama Supreme Court, and the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, a left over from the Bush era, to shut down  and seize electronic bingo machines in Greene County, a heavily black and economically poor area of Alabama in the heart of the Black Belt.

African-Americans have been arrested for voicing opposition to Riley's New Race War.

To date, no dogs or water hoses have been used by Riley and his henchmen.

The Associated Press reports:

Sixteen protesters who refused to leave the Greenetrack casino in west Alabama during a night-long standoff were arrested Thursday as state police entered to seize more than 800 electronic bingo machines. Alabama Public Safety Director Christopher Murphy said the 16 had been blocking the entrance to the casino at Eutaw for 12 hours after the Alabama Supreme Court cleared the way for state troopers to conduct the raid. One of the protesters, Democratic state Sen. Bobby Singleton of Greensboro, told WBRC television they wanted to demonstrate their opposition to Republican Gov. Bob Riley's gambling task force. Protesters contend Riley is wrongly closing a major employer in the poor, rural county.

Obama's DOJ Taking a Hard Look

With the collapse of several backdating cases and the expected shredding of the dishonest "honest services fraud" law by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Rove Republican Racket is imploding.

Now the Obama Administration and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder are taking a hard look at those two areas of law that were pumped up by the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration.

Main Justice blog writes:

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division, said in a recent interview with Main Justice that the department was taking a “hard look” at the backdating cases. “We take a hard look — whether we’re talking about stock options cases or whether we’re talking about honest services cases, where it’s our obligation to assess the state of the law,” Breuer said. “That’s what we’re doing in the Criminal Division and that’s what the U.S. Attorneys’ offices are doing.”

Throwing Honest Services Fraud Away

The Rove Republican Racket's favorite legal weapon of choice, the "honest services" fraud law, is being tossed over the side of the bridge by federal prosecutors.

The Chicago Tribune reported last week:

With a U.S. Supreme Court decision looming on the disputed "honest services" fraud law, federal prosecutors Thursday revised their indictment against former [Illinois] Gov. Rod Blagojevich, restructuring the charges without altering the specific allegations against him. Prosecutors added eight counts that mirror other charges in the indictment but that don't rely on honest services fraud. That way, if the Supreme Court limits or tosses the controversial law, prosecutors can simply drop those counts and proceed to trial as scheduled on June 3. The newly added counts, based on other statutes, would ensure Blagojevich would still face the same allegations — that he sought to improperly profit from his office, including by trying to sell a vacated U.S. Senate seat.

As reader's know, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has ripped the dishonest "honest services fraud" law to shreds saying that someone who calls in sick to go to a ball game would be guilty of a crime under this law. Across the country, during the Rove-Bush-Cheney years, Democrats and other political operatives were tossed in jail based on this vague and harmful law. Maybe the dozens of political prisoners sitting in federal prisons around the country will see freedom soon.

Florida Fumble

The Rove Republican Racket has stretched the law, used the dishonest "honest services" law, and bent situations to put decent people behind bars, usually Democrats.

An interesting case in Florida that highlights how government prosecutors lie and manipulate the system made the headlines yesterday. Although the victim of prosecutorial misconduct is a convicted cop killer, the point of the story is how many prosecutors arrogantly believe they are above the law.

From the Palm Beach Post:

The Florida Supreme Court today threw out the death sentence of convicted cop killer Paul Beasley Johnson because “the record here is so rife with evidence of previously undisclosed prosecutorial misconduct that we have no choice but to grant relief.”

In October, Gov. Charlie Crist ordered Johnson to be put to death by lethal injection in November.

The high court stayed the execution and heard oral arguments on the case in which Johnson was convicted of going on a drug-induced killing spree in Polk County in 1981. Johnson was convicted of murdering three men, including a Polk County Sheriff’s deputy.

In its ruling today, the court found that prosecutors intentionally got a jailhouse informer to get information from Johnson, take notes and give the notes to investigators. Prosecutors then lied about their role in soliciting the information at Johnson’s trial in 1981.

At a later trial in 1988, a different prosecutor used the same testimony that helped persuade the jury to hand down a 7-5 vote in favor of the death penalty, the court ruled today.

Iowa Immunity Case Evaporates

The case against two Iowa prosecutors who engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and faced a civil lawsuit by two innocent men who were framed and wrongly jailed for 25 years has ended.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case early last November, agreed to dismiss the case yesterday after Pottawattamie County representatives and the plaintiffs settled the case for $12 million.

The case had enormous implications against prosecutors who held they had personal immunity from misconduct done before the criminal case was tried. It appeared by the line of questioning by members of the U.S. Supreme Court last November, prosecutors would have most likely lost that shield of immunity for misconduct done before a criminal trial began.

The $12 million ended the case, but the misconduct in question (framing innocent victims) can sadly still continue.

Hope for Paul Minor

Paul Minor, the prominent Democratic fundraiser from Mississippi, targeted by the Rove Repubican Racket in part with the "dishonest" honest-services crime, now sees hope and possible liberation from federal prison. Earlier this month, several criminal charges against Minor were tossed out.

The Associated Press writes:

JACKSON (AP) — Disbarred lawyer Paul Minor and two judges he’s accused of bribing hope an unrelated case before the U.S. Supreme Court will get them out of prison. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said the federal statute for honest-services fraud is too broad, joking it could make a crime of a worker calling in sick so he could go to a ball game.

A recent hearing before the Supreme Court has many legal experts believing the high court is poised to strike down the statute, which makes it illegal for public officials to fraudulently deprive constituents of honest services. Some observers say such a move would help Minor and former Coast judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield.

In March 2007 a federal jury convicted the three on corruption charges because Minor had helped to guarantee or pay off loans of the judges, who heard some of his cases. It was a scheme, prosecutors said, to influence the judges’ decisions and deprive the state of their honest service. They were convicted of bribery, conspiracy and fraud, and Minor also was found guilty of racketeering.

If justices throw out the statute, it would be the second victory for the three, which saw a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently toss out all their bribery convictions after finding a lack of federal jurisdiction. Matt Steffey, professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, said the application of the federal bribery statute to a state court judge whose salary and office receives no federal funds is “shaky at best.” He said he believes they would go free if the high court finds the honest-services statute unconstitutional.

“There is some possibility that prosecutors will say the claim is procedurally barred,” he said. The 5th Circuit ruling on the bribery charges means they could be resentenced on the remaining charges. It’s not clear how much the reversal will reduce Minor’s sentence; he got the most time for a racketeering conviction, which was upheld.

Protecting Pied Piper Peters

Last month, we told you how the U.S. Department of Justice is trying to play hide and seek on giving out information on the immunity deal of the Pied Piper of Mississippi, the corrupt former DA, Ed Peters (pictured).

Mississippi Litigation Review (MLR) has been hammering at getting information on this "sweet deal' concocted by disgraced U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee of backwards Mississippi, who racially targeted convenience store owners with Islamic sounding names,

Greenlee and his friends in the Rove Republican Racket gave Peters an immunity deal and in turn threw a couple of high profile Democratic boosters in jail.

MLR made a SECOND request for the records and got a response this week. MLR writes:

Once again the Justice Department refused to turn over Ed Peters' immunity agreement. Here is the DOJ's response. I received what appears to be a form letter like the one that DOJ sent last time, as discussed in this earlier post. But this time DOJ added a note on the last page:

NOTE: We have received your letter dated Sept. 16, 2009. Is the immunity agreement you seek a public record?

Great. A clue. I take this to mean that DOJ is either trying to be helpful, or playing games. I'm a natural cynic, so it's not much of a question to me. But I'll take the bait anyway and request all public records.

Stretching the Law

Kevin Ring, a lobbyist, (pictured) was targeted by the Rove Republican Racket for "honest services fraud" among other charges. His alleged offense? Offering congressional and justice department staffers baseball tickets and free dinners which was not illegal to do at the time.

Last week, after much publicity inside the beltway and a long trial, a verdict didn't come through; a mistrial was declared. A former prosecutor gives a reason why the Rove Racket lost on a post at TPMMuckracker:

Peter Zeidenberg, who while at DOJ worked on the case against Bush administration official David Safavian, told TPMmuckraker that he wasn't surprised that prosecutors failed to convict Ring, because the meals, event tickets, and other goodies that Ring lavished on government officials did not represent crimes in themselves at the time. Rather, the Feds argued that, taken together, they amounted to a conspiracy to deprive the public of the honest services of public office-holders -- a tough sell for a jury.

It seem prosecutors tried to stretch non-criminal acts into a conspiracy. The Rove Racket stretched the law in an attempt to throw Ring behind bars. This was truly a political prosecution. Ring's real crime? Having worked as an associate to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Slap at the Prosecution

The U.S. Supreme Court this term has chosen to hear the case of Jeff Skilling (pictured), the former Enron executive, who was convicted of crimes including "honest services" fraud. Yesterday, we wrote about the the closely-watched cases being reviewed by the nation's highest court involving the dishonest "honest services" crime.

Today, the Houston Chronicle writes about the Skilling case (Enron was based in Houston):

[Jeff] Skilling, the former Enron CEO who was convicted on 19 counts and is serving a 24-year prison term, raised two issues in convincing the [U.S. Supreme] court to review his convictions. He contends that pretrial publicity and the effect of Enron's collapse on the Houston community tainted the jury pool.

He also says that some of his convictions were based on the theory that he failed to provide “honest services” to his employer and that the term isn't clearly defined in the law.

“This is a slap at the prosecution,” Houston lawyer David Berg said. “These cases were over-indicted and showed an absence of a sense of justice.” Barry Pollack, a Washington lawyer who tried two Enron cases, agreed. “The Enron Task Force doesn't have a great record on appeal,” Pollack said.

After the court announced Tuesday it would take up Skilling's case, a Department of Justice spokeswoman said prosecutors would not comment.

The absence of justice is evident from the Rove-Bush Cheney years and the political prosecutions by the Rove Republican Racket.

As a side note, the late Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay, former Chairman of Enron, was a friend and financial backer of President George W. Bush.