The House Judiciary Committee will conduct oversight hearings that will involve an investigation of the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a committee spokeswoman confirmed.

File photo by Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman

The case will be part of an upcoming congressional hearing by two subcommittees that oversee commercial and administrative law and crime, terrorism and homeland security as part of the Judiciary Committee's investigation into actions by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who resigned in August, and the Bush Department of Justice.

The focus of the investigation will be whether Republican U.S. attorneys pursued criminal cases against Democrats for partisan reasons and include cases from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well as Alabama.

There is still no date set for the hearing and no witness list has been made available yet.

The decision to hold a formal hearing follows several weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Department of Justice over the release of internal documents related to Siegelman's case - and the Sept. 14 closed-door interview with GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson.

The Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has been pursuing claims that Republican appointees in the Justice Department and elsewhere in government intentionally targeted Democrats for political advantage, a claim made by Siegelman throughout his trial and sentencing.

Conyers and three other Democratic members of the panel opened an inquiry into Siegelman's case on July 17, also focusing on the overturned conviction of Wisconsin civil servant Georgia Thompson and the charges brought against Pennsylvania coroner Cyril Wecht. At the time, the members of Congress said they suspected the trio were victims of "selective prosecution."

"Allegations that even one of the nation's 93 U.S. Attorneys is improperly prosecuting or failing to prosecute Democratic officials based on their political affiliation have the potential to taint and undermine the legitimacy of our entire criminal justice system," they wrote.

The request was signed by Rep. Artur Davis, a Birmingham Democrat, Conyers, Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif. and Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. Sanchez chairs the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.

A spokesman for Davis, Corey Ealons, told a reporter for an Alabama newspaper Monday that the congressman is "pleased the committee has decided to pursue the political prosecutions issue with a hearing and he'll stand by to wait and see what the committee decides to do further."

Davis, citing a June 30 editorial in the New York Times about Siegelman's case, agreed that the committee should investigate and wrote Conyers July 6 with the request. He argued that improper political meddling was "not implausible" and that Siegelman's actions were not criminal.

Siegelman still sits in a Louisiana jail awaiting a hearing from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller on the issue of his release pending appeal. The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered Fuller to hold a hearing on that issue a few days ago, although there has been no word from the federal courthouse in Montgomery on when that hearing will be scheduled.

Late Update

Reliable sources say the transcript of GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson's deposition before the House Judiciary Committee staff and legal counsel may be released to the public on Wednesday or Thursday of this week, and that an announcement about the hearing will be held in Washington next week, maybe Tuesday. The first hearings should be held the next week, but may not involve the Siegelman case but instead start with the case out of Wisconsin. So the Alabama case may still be weeks away from a hearing in Washington.