Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman probably thought U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller never would do him a favor. But Fuller has inadvertently done just that.
The point of Fuller's recent 30-page memorandum opinion was supposed to be that Siegelman should remain in federal prison pending appeal. But the opinion does just the opposite. In fact, Fuller actually makes Siegelman's case for him--showing that, under the law and the facts, Siegelman must be released from prison pending appeal.
How could a federal judge, someone you assume to be rather intelligent, make such a gaffe? My only explanation is this: People who are attempting to cover up wrongdoing are prone to step in doo-doo. And if you actually read Fuller's opinion with a somewhat critical eye, it becomes clear that the judge has stepped in doo-doo big time with this one.
And that makes me think he is doing his darnedest to cover up a sham of a prosecution.
With two recent posts, we have shown that Fuller's own memo proves that Siegelman, by law, should be released from prison pending appeal. And it's not even a close call.
Fuller worked up a 30-page memo in an apparent effort to make this look like a complicated matter. Well, it isn't. All you need to do is read roughly three pages of his opinion, conduct some quick legal research and . . . presto, you see that Judge Mark Fuller is blowing some serious smoke.
Here's an easy way to sum it up:
* The key question is: Does the appeal raise a substantial question of law or fact that, if found in the defendant's favor, would result in reversal or an order for a new trial.
* Fuller's own words show there is a substantial question of law on both key charges--federal-funds bribery and honest-services mail fraud.
* On bribery, Fuller indicates there is some question whether 11th Circuit law requires a quid pro quo, a "something-for-something" arrangement, in order to have a conviction. And as we have shown from a 2007 case--U.S. v. McCarter, 219 Fed. Appx. 921--there is no question about it. The language in McCarter is clear: "To prove a defendant is guilty of bribery, the government must prove there was a quid pro quo--a specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act." And McCarter is based on a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision, so its grounded in pretty solid stuff. So there you have it: The judge's own words show there is a question of law that should be decided in Siegelman's favor. Score: Siegelman 1, Fuller 0.
* On honest-services mail fraud, Fuller indicates that he has no clue what he is talking about. He states that there is some question whether a quid pro quo is required for a mail-fraud conviction. And as we have shown, a quid pro quo has nothing to do with mail fraud. It is not remotely an element of the crime. Once again, the judge's own words show there is a question of law that should be decided in Siegelman's favor. Score: Siegelman 2, Fuller 0.
* As for questions of fact, all facts are in question because there is no transcript of the case--and there won't be one for at least another two months. Fuller spends almost 16 pages of his memo reciting his version of facts in the case. But those are not facts, in a legal sense, at all. And one can only wonder what dark crevice he pulled them from. Score: Siegelman 3, Fuller 0.
I would say Siegelman is pitching a shut out, and Fuller is toast.
Does this mean the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will be releasing Siegelman from prison any moment? Of course not. That court is made up of judges, and the whole point of this blog is to show that judges often are the last people you want to trust with the law. And for all I know, the 11th Circuit might consist of justices whose respect for the law may be no greater than Fuller's.
But if the law still means anything in the Age of Rove--and that's a mighty big if--Don Siegelman should be out of prison pretty darn soon.
Siegelman's Attorneys Ask Appeals Court For Release
Don Siegelman's attorneys are trying again to get the former Alabama Governor released from prison pending appeal, this time based on an unusual issue we reported well before the mainstream media would raise the issue.
Attorneys filed papers Monday with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta citing a horrendous delay in the trial transcript and U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller's failure to provide the appeals court solid, legal reasons for denying Siegelman an appeal bond.
The appeal of Siegelman's conviction on bribery and obstruction of justice charges can't go forward without a transcript of the 10-week trial that was concluded more than a year ago, in 2006. And Judge Fuller has so far refused to comply with an order of the appeals court to submit a detailed, written response on why he should not be released like every other white collar defendant while the case of his appeal is heard.
"Governor Siegelman's continued confinement, pending appeal, coupled with the trial court's continued refusal to provide any legal explanation for incarcerating Governor Siegelman on appeal, has denied Gov. Siegelman's constitutional right to due process," his attorneys argued in court papers, according to the Associated Press and other news organizations.
The trial transcript was delayed by the death of court reporter Jimmy Dickens in August, according to reports, and court reporter Risa Entrekin asked the 11th Circuit in November to extend the deadline for completion to March 31, citing her workload and the size of the transcript. Fuller said last month he expects a completed transcript by Jan. 31.
Attorneys for Siegelman said Monday they understand the unusual circumstances but the delays do Siegelman no good.
"When you've got a client in prison, and it's been six months with no explanation for why he's sitting there - the way to eliminate that issue entirely is to let him out," attorney Vince Kilborn told the Mobile Press-Register.
Due to the clearly political nature of Siegelman's prosecution, which has been shown over and over again by news organizations with more investigative power and objectivity than the conservative, monopoly newspapers in Alabama, this request should get a quick and favorable ruling from the three-judge appeals court panel in Atlanta, legal sources say.
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman sent long-time supporters a number of individualized Christmas cards from prison this past week. A reader sent this one in. I'm wondering if George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or Mark Fuller would have this much class if they were thrown in jail. On some of the cards, this was the message. "Merry Christmas to all of you, with heartfelt gratitude for your support. Please enjoy this meaningful holiday season and appreciate your freedom, your homes and your loved ones. I look forward to cherishing these precious gifts, more than ever, in the coming year. With your continued hard work, I believe this Christmas will be my only one within these walls. Despite the grim conditions here, I will celebrate this special day by keeping my faith, and by maintaining the hope that, with your help, we can move Congress to expand their investigation and restore American justice - our once bright beacon in the free world. I cannot thank you enough, or ask more emphatically that you continue and intensify your extremely important efforts. May the many blessings of this season bring joy to each of you." Don Siegelman # 24775-001, Satellite Prison Camp, Post Office Box 5010, Oakdale, LA 71463-5019
Siegelman Interview Surfaces on Stolen 2002 Election
An interview with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman talking about how he thinks the 2002 election was stolen re-surfaced on the Web yesterday in the aftermath of a new reiteration of the story by an online news outlet. As we were the first news organization to investigate and report in-depth back in June, it is likely that votes were switched in the Baldwin County courthouse on election night in November 2002, handing the election to Alabama's sitting governor, Bob Riley.
Siegelman spoke to Julie Sigwart of Take Back the Media on Sept. 13, 2004 - two years before he was sentenced to federal prison. Siegelman says his political and legal troubles can be traced back to the election of 2000 after he publicly backed former Vice President Al Gore for president instead of George W. Bush, a move that Bush's political adviser Karl Rove would never forget - or forgive. He also says his impression of the president after meeting him in person was that, while Bush was "very personable," he "was not exceedingly bright."
General Clark Calls Siegelman Prosecution Political, Bush Presidency 'The Worst'
Photo by Glynn Wilson
General Wesley Clark says Siegalman's prosecution was "politicized" and called "W" the "worst ever."
by Glynn Wilson
General Wesley Clark received standing ovations from Democrats Friday night when he called former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman "a great American" and an "honest man" who was "unjustly confined" by a rogue Justice Department "politicized" by a corrupt Republican administration, and for his criticism of Bush's war in Iraq.
The keynote speaker at the annual Jefferson-Jackson fund raising dinner at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center ballroom, Clark said America is "a nation at war" at home on many fronts as well as abroad.
He made the case why the Democratic Party is the party to bring the nation together again after seven long years of rule by crass corporate capitalist Republican neo-cons who have trashed the Constitution on many fronts.
"We're seeing a 20 year campaign to polarize and partisanize this country and take away the basic fundamentals that we fought so hard to put in place," he said. "It's the use of executive power to put in wiretaps and other spying on the American people to take away our fundamental liberties...
"It's the wholesale politicization of the Department of Justice," he said. "It's a stench of corruption that has run from the White House, through Jack Abramoff..."
The past seven years have been wasted by one lost opportunity after another, he said, on health care, education, civil rights, energy and the environment, including global warming.
"We didn't have to fight that war in Iraq" he said, adding that George "W" Bush is "the worst" president ever.
Clark, a four star general, led U.S. and NATO forces in Kosovo during the administration of Bill Clinton. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for president.
Leading up to Clark's address, other speakers included state Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom Jr., Congressman Artur Davis, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, state Senator Vivian Davis Figures, party chair Joe Turnham, vice chair and former Secretary of State Nancy Worley and Joe Reed, president of the Alabama Democratic Conference.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Congressman Artur Davis from Birmingham is a rising star in the Democratic Party...
Reed, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, called on Democrats to work hard and "win" elections in 2008, because winning is more important than anything else.
If the Democrats had won the White House and other races in 2000 and 2004, he said, "Don Siegelman wouldn't be behind bars today."
Congressman Davis was praised by many of the speakers for his work on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating Siegelman's prosecution as part of a probe into the politization of justice by the Bush administration.
Siegelman is awaiting word on his appeal in a Louisiana federal prison after being sentenced to seven years and four months by a Republican activist judge for allegedly taking a bribe from HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, who is also serving time in the case awaiting his appeal. Both of them have filed motions demanding release from jail pending appeal, but the appeals process is being held up due to the death of a court reporter who never finished the transcript of the trial from last year.
Prosecutors from the U.S. attorneys office in Montgomery have denied politics played a role in the case. But they have been noticeably silent of late since the Senate confirmed Michael Mukasy as Attorney General to replace Alberto Gonzales, who resigned under a dark cloud of suspicion in August.
There is no word yet on whether Gonzales will be prosecuted in Congress or the courts for his malfeasance in office, although Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy ruled against president Bush's claims of executive privilege this week for his long-time political fixer Karl Rove.
Franklin is just a funny liar trying to advance his own career a la Clarence Thomas.
Johnson is not funny, but someone in the Atlanta bureau of AP should investigate this way too cozy relationship. Hey, maybe they just go to the same wacko church?
The American people and the people of Alabama now know the truth.
Pretty soon, the appeals court in Atlanta will declare it as well, and Congress may get to the bottom of it too. Under Bush, Gonzales and Canary, federal courthouses have been turned into corrupt arms of the executive branch.
This miscarriage of justice must not be allowed to stand if anything resembling American justice is to survive and prevail.
Conyers Apologizes to Jill Simpson for Transcript Leak
October 18,2007
Ms. Dana Jill Simpson
P.O. Box. 341
Rainsville, AL 35986
Dear Ms. Simpson:
I write to offer my personal thanks for the cooperation you have voluntarily provided the
Committee on the Judiciary as it investigates serious allegations that political considerations may
have influenced federal criminal prosecutions. In particular, I thank you for agreeing to be
questioned by both majority and minority Committee staff in a sworn, on-the-record interview
last month. The success of the Committee's work depends in great measure on the willingness of citizens to step forward and share information they possess.
I also feel compelled to address the upsetting premature release of the written transcript of
your sworn interview. As you know, all parties to the interview agreed in writing that the
interview would be kept confidential unlil I formally released it to the public after consultation
with your counsel and Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith. Yet, before I authorized the
release, local press in Alabama obtained an apparently leaked copy of the transcript, and used it
to write an article commenting on the interview, and also posted the transcript on the world-wide-web. I appreciate that this sort of selective release was not permitted by the agreement under which you offered your testimony, and I deeply regret that it occurred. While I give you my word that neither I nor any member of my staff were responsible for this improper release, the Committee's agreement with you regarding the terms of release was not honored and, as Chairman of this Committee, I offer you my apologies.
Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham came to the defense of Democratic Congressman Artur Davis today. Davis was publically and personally castigated by both the GOP Party Chairman and the governor in Alabama newspapers for his participation and remarks in this week's congressional hearings looking into the Republican political prosecution of Democrats, including former Governor Don Siegelman.
It is incredible that only now, when Congress is having formal investigations, and after months of debate on the subject of political prosecution, are Governor Riley and Rep. Hubbard dismissing and criticizing the legitimate process of oversight.
"The shrill and unprofessional personal reactions of Riley and Hubbard to Artur Davis' participation in this process are unbecoming and insulting to the Congressman," Turnham said in a press release. "Representative Davis is a former assistant U.S. Attorney, a prominent member of Congress and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Not only is he uniquely qualified to speak to these issues, but he has a sworn duty to pursue truth, justice and to see that the rule of law through our constitution is followed.
"His remarks and actions in those roles have been only professional and indeed courageous,"
Turnham said. "He does not deserve the personal, partisan attacks from Alabama's top Republicans that are akin to 'killing the messenger' who seeks the truth."
The whole issue of political prosecutions is now a national one and part of a large-scale examination of the Bush Administration, he said. It is not a political sideshow in Alabama and it is not a partisan spin machine.
"In fact, the public statements of the last several days from the GOP and Governor Riley (their first and most significant comments to date on this year long subject) are serving to disrupt legal processes and only add fodder to a growing sentiment that the White House and prominent Republicans in our state may have been involved in incredible actions of misconduct."
To read the rest, go to the Locust Fork News page and find the local coverage under Regional news.
Editor's Note: This national magazine feature is the result of a five month-long investigation, funded by The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund. It began on June 1, 2007, the day the affidavit story broke in the New York Times and Time magazine.
by Glynn Wilson
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, one of the most popular progressive governors in Southern political history, is cleaning toilets in a Louisiana jail today, convicted on bribery charges in what may be one of the worst abuses of the federal courts by the executive branch during President Bush's tenure. Siegelman's case, among others, was taken up October 23 in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on selective prosecutions.
Siegelman was indicted by US Attorney Leura Canary, whose husband is a close friend of Karl Rove, and his seven-year sentence--the second-longest ever given to a politician convicted of bribery in this country--was doled out by Mark Fuller, a Republican judge who owes his lifetime appointment on the federal bench to the President. The bribery charges have nothing to do with personal enrichment but rather with donations Siegelman helped secure for a campaign to pass a lottery bill that would have increased funds for Alabama's ailing public schools.
Yet his case would probably never have been investigated by Congress if it weren't for the sworn statements of a lawyer and Republican Party operative from Alabama--statements, introduced into the public record at Tuesday morning's hearing, that have been the subject of much contentious debate among members of the committee.
The attorney, Dana Jill Simpson, was a longtime Republican player whose sworn affidavit alleges that Siegelman was tried and convicted as part of a conspiracy to keep him from running for political office in the future.
(I would like to thank the Nation Institute for funding this work. To read the entire story, go to The Nation magazine's Website):
'No Question' Siegelman Prosecution 'Driven by Politics'
by Glynn Wilson
Birmingham attorney and former U.S. attorney Doug Jones testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday about what he called "a disturbing trend" of selective prosecutions on the part of the Bush Justice Department. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, also concluded that politics was clearly involved in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
President Bush embraces Karl Rove on his resignation day in August
While partisan politics should play no role in bringing cases and the timing of cases brought against U.S. citizens by the Department of Justice, Jones said: "That does not appear to be the case with this administration."
He testified that state and federal prosecutors started investigating Siegelman not long after he assumed the office of governor in January, 1999.
Jones said he became aware of an investigation of Siegelman aides in 2001 and 2002, who committed crimes for which Siegelman "had no knowledge."
He began representing Siegelman in 2003 when federal prosecutors indicated they were investigating the former governor once he made it clear he was going to run for the office again in the 2006 race.
In a meeting with the U.S. Attorneys office in Montgomery in the spring of 2004, Jones testified he was assured that Siegelman would not be charged in the investigation.
Then in the fall of 2004, he was told that a meeting was held in Washington and that a top-to-bottom review of the Siegelman cases was ordered, and then "all of a sudden" Siegelman was indicted after all the next year.
The new case was "a reversal of what we had been told" by the Justice Department and "came as a stunning shock," he testifieid, and it was a based on "a wholesale renewed investigation."
"There is no question in my mind that the Department of Justice in Washington was behind the investigation," he said. And he said there is no question in his mind that it was "driven by politics."
Such a blatant case of interjecting politics into the legal process "undermines the credibility of the system," he testified.
He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, "An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere."
Under questioning from Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, Mr. Jones reiterated that the review of the case in Washington occurred during the same time frame that Republican lawyer Jill Simpson testified her conversation took place with Gov. Bob Riley's son Rob Riley, indicating that Bush political adviser Karl Rove met with the DOJ Office of Public Integrity and pressured them to bring the case.
Jones also testified that it was clear that the U.S. Attorneys office in Montgomery was involved in "targeting individuals" rather than investigating crimes in the Siegelman case. "This is something we cannot tolerate in this country," he said. It gives prosecutors way too much leeway to cajole witnesses and abuse the legal process.
Jones also said in response to questions that "there is no question" there were people in the state and in Washington, D.C. who were "out to get Siegelman."
Davis entered into the record the phone record Ms. Simpson submitted to the committee as evidence, which shows an 11 minute phone call on Nov. 18, 2002, to the phone number of Rob Riley's law firm, Riley and Jackson, in Homewood.
He used this piece of evidence to counter affidavits filed with the committee today by Rob Riley and Terry Butts, both of which deny that a phone call took place.
In his concluding remarks, Davis said he had trouble believing in the American legal system after what he has seen in the Siegelman case.
"At every turn we see partisan politics, Washington politics, Karl Rove politics," Davis said.
He indicated that while the prosecutors in Montgomery may be good people and have the best of intentions, he said perhaps it was the culture of the Gonzales Justice Departmant that led "good prosecutors" to believe the only way "to earn spurs" was to "turn the Department of Justice into a political tool."
Former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh testified about a political case in Pennsylvania.
University of Missouri Communications Professor Donald C. Shields testified about a peer reviewed study he conducted showing that the Bush Justice Department has investigated and tried far more Democrats than Republicans.
"There is no question" that politics has been involved, he said. "The numbers don't lie."
The U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittees on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and Commercial and Administrative Law will hold a hearing today, Oct. 23, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, 9 CDT, called "Allegations of Selective Prosecution: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System."
Members will address allegations of selective prosecution in several states including Alabama, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Former Alabama U.S. Attorney Doug Jones is on the witness list, as well as former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and University of Missouri Communications Professor Donald C. Shields.
The Website LeftInAlabama is doing a live blog of the hearing here.
The Nation magazine plans on running a story about Jill Simpson and the Siegelman case today. Check the magazine's Web site later on.
National Public Radio ran an interesting story on the case this morning. To hear it, go to NPR's Website.
To see a funny case of an objective editorial page and a biased news section, go read the Birmingham News today. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Hey, if they hate Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy so much and think they are guilty, why not just say that on the editorial page? In the news section, wouldn't it be better to honestly and accurately report all sides instead of running a diversionary campaign against Jill Simpson? Only in Alabama...
House Judiciary Committee Schedules Selective Prosecution Hearing Oct. 23
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich, will hold a joint hearing on "Selective Prosecution: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System," on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 10 a.m., according to the committee's Website.
The hearing will be a joint session of the subcommittees on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, and Commercial and Administrative Law.
No witness list or supporting documents have been posted yet, and there's no word on whether the hearing will in fact include information about the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
Time magazine has previously reported that attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham may be called as a witness, since he represented Siegelman briefly in the early days of his case - and since he indicated in reporting for the Locust Fork News and Journal and The Progressive Populist newspaper in Texas that White House involvement in political prosecuations should be investigated.
North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson may be called as a witness to testify at some point, although her attorney is out of the country and has indicated it will be several weeks before that testimony may happen.
TOWN CREEK, Ala., Oct. 14 - Jill Simpson sits on a red clay and limestone beach using her hands to bunch the sand into balls, taking a Sunday break from the troubles she's caused - in the nation's capital and to Republicans in her native land.
Like a hand full of brave crusading lawyers who have traveled through the woods of Bucks Pocket in Northeast Alabama before and contemplated the state of the world by the water on a crisp autumn day, including some of the great names of the Civil Rights movement, Ms. Simpson stands at the center of a political storm that could rock the American system of justice to its core. Her story lifts the blindfold from the eyes of Lady Justice, if just for a moment.
After being attacked for the past few weeks in the biggest and richest newspaper chain in the state, by the governor's son no less, she seems undaunted and unafraid. She's fully aware that she is taking on some of the most loyalty-demanding politicians probably in American history.
She has violated their code and she knows it. Once this Rubicon is crossed, however, there's no turning back. She seems to have faith that, in the end, truth matters - and justice will prevail.
"I made the decision in May to speak truth to power. Anytime you speak truth to power, there are great risks," she says, after researching the subject on her computer and reading about other women who have taken on powerful men in the past. She mentions Anita Hill, who wrote a book about her experience testifying against Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed by the Senate anyway for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Ms. Simpson is a great admirer of women in history. She comes from a long line of accountants and farmers before that, Republicans primarily because they do not like taxes. Her people tend to strongly favor the University of Alabama football team on Saturdays in the fall, and that is where she went to college as an undergraduate and a law student - and where she came to know Rob Riley.
He is about to enter the political storm as well, it seems, or at least he vowed to in the Birmingham paper. He claimed he was going to write his own affidavit countering Ms. Simpson's charges.
Ms. Simpson occasionally lectures writers who fail to tell stories of great women. She is the kind of Southerner who can talk and talk all day, about German poetry, especially by women, but also about the plans for her farm in Dekalb County, her extensive collection of folk art from the Rev. Howard Finster, what's wrong with America under George W. Bush and his war in Iraq - or the concept of speaking truth to power.
"You have to understand, there are risks," she emphasizes. "I evaluated the risks. And the risks were, when I did the affidavit, that I would be brutally attacked. And, of course, that's what happened."
Then without a second thought, she finishes her Coca-Cola and sits back down in the canoe and paddles toward the other shore of Town Creek, pausing to admire a great blue heron flying off into the sunset.
In May of this year, after much legal research and a prolonged attempt to simply leak what she knew to Democrat lawyers - then after a great deal of soul searching - Ms. Simpson finally decided to thrust herself into the public spotlight, the political vortex, to expose a terrible problem she sees with the justice system.
She wrote and signed a damning, sworn affidavit offering evidence of collusion by the Bush Justice Department - and the political campaigns of Alabama Governor Bob Riley - to blatantly use the federal courts to win elections in a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution.
She has now testified in a sworn deposition to the House Judiciary Committee, which plans a series of hearings in the next few weeks with the theme, "Allegations of Selective Prosecution: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System."
CBS's Sixty Minutes has interviewed Ms. Simpson for an upcoming show on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, one of the most popular Democrats in the South who is now locked up in a Louisiana jail cell alongside Edwin Edwards, the infamous former governor of Louisiana.
Siegelman's crime? Allowing a wealthy businessman to pay off the debt on a campaign - defeated by the Christian Right - to pass a lottery to fund education and Hope scholarships like the one's offered in neighboring Georgia.
Siegelman was relentlessly pursued by Bush appointees in the federal courts in Birmingham and Montgomery, where the powerful and staunchly conservative Business Council of Alabama seems to call the shots - along with direction from the White House.
Council president Bill Canary can pick up his cell phone and call his old friend Karl Rove just as easily as he can reach the publisher of the Birmingham News. Yet he and his wife, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, deny having anything to do with prosecuting Siegelman. She allegedly recused herself, at least according to the press release, although she has never produced a copy of a signed recusal motion and none of the court records have yet been made public, not even the trial transcript.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, the federal judge in the case, also a Bush appointee, has not spoken publicly or denied allegations unearthed by Ms. Simpson that he was a compromised Republican judge and a defense contractor who should have recused himself from hearing the case. The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has indicated it will take up that issue in the coming weeks.
U.S. Attorney Alice Martin in Birmingham tried to convict Siegelman of another malfeasance, but that case was thrown out of court before the opening arguments ever started.
Ms. Simpson watched those cases go down. Knowing what she knew from working on Governor Riley's campaigns with Rob, she says she just could not remain silent as the sentencing deadline for both defendants approached in June.
Her family has a long history of political involvement, but nothing like this. Her father knew George Wallace so well he helped Ms. Simpson get into law school, although while she was there, she was one of the most vocal Christian Republicans on campus and an ardent opponent of abortion in the heyday of the Moral Majority and Ronald Reagan.
Yet like a lot of educated people of her generation, she is full of surprising contradictions. She also served drinks at the blues pub Egan's on the strip in Tuscaloosa in those days, often pouring the whiskey for Bob and Rob Riley as they talked about politics and the future. Rob Riley went on from there to the law school at Yale and had big plans to one day run for governor himself.
Over the years Ms. Simpson has reevaluated how she feels about certain issues. She tends to side with Democrats on gay rights and the death penalty, but she doesn't like taxes any more than her parents and she still feels so strongly against abortion that she adopted a baby girl last year.
She has been married and divorced twice and has a 16-year-old son who plays Christian rock music and wants to go to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Virginia and become a preacher.
Since she has come forward her family has suffered a lot of grief, she testified in her statements to the House committee.
"It has been very stressful, and it's been difficult for my family," she testified.
Her mother, Jo Simpson, 73, comes from a long line of Republicans, and just loves former Senate Majority Leader Tom Delay, still. She cooks beef stew in a pressure cooker in the smaller house they are now confined to since a fire ruined their larger home down the street in February. It's been hard cleaning the black smoke residue off of what possessions they could salvage, she says, and it's hard living in a smaller, cramped place. And, she worries about her daughter, "sometimes."
Jill herself is not too worried, at least not today, and seems consigned to the fight that still lies ahead as the investigation goes to Washington. She has shunned having her face plastered all over the television news to date, but she may be called to testify in a public hearing before Congress, at which point the country will find out who she is and her picture will be all over the place.
Like a lot of other people in this part of the country, she awaits word on whether the three-judge appeals panel in Atlanta will release Siegelman and his co-defendant, Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth, on an appeal bond. Or perhaps they will order a mistrial due to improper behavior on the part of the jury for reading news coverage online and communicating by e-mail after a dynamite charge from the judge.
No matter what they say about her, she still feels like the risks and the grief will be worth it in the end.
"You know, I've been attacked, but you have to evaluate if the risks are worth it," she says. "Of course they are worth it."
Most people who speak truth to power feel a "moral obligation" to do it, she says, "and I certainly did. I just couldn't walk away from the fact - and there's no doubt about it - it was a political persecution."
She hopes people understand how hard it is to do, but she concludes: "I've done it, now. And I will take whatever consequences that may come from it - because it was the right thing to do."
House Judiciary Committee Releases Simpson Transcript
by Glynn Wilson
The House Judiciary Committee released a transcript today containing explosive new testimony showing a clear-cut case of White House involvement in using the federal courts to manipulate the electoral system of the United States.
North Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson's testimony expands on her sworn affidavit from May of this year. In the affidavit and in her statements to Congress, she documents the involvement of White House and Bush Justice Department officials in scheming to prosecute former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman to keep him from winning future elections.
At the heart of this scheme lies Alabama Governor Bob Riley's son Rob Riley, who told her in several conversations about a plan to recruit a Republican federal judge to handle the case against Siegelman.
"Rob told me that Mark Fuller was still a government contractor in 2005 and a United States federal judge, which I found unusual," Ms. Simpson says, so she began to conduct her own research on the judge and concluded that he had a conflict of interest and should not have sat in judgment in the case.
The Eleventh U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta has agreed to consider that issue on appeal. But the three-judge panel assigned the case has not yet issued a ruling on that issue.
Fuller was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2002 at the urging of Rep. Terry Everett, a Republican from Enterprise, a city that is at the heart of defense-related industries in Alabama. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a right-wing Republican from Mobile, was also in on the appointment.
Ms. Simpson says in one of her conversations with Riley during the winter of 2005 he made a statement that "Fuller would hang Don Siegelman." She asked him how he knew that, and he told her, in addition to being a fellow machine fraternity member at the University of Alabama and associated with Republican politicians such as Everett, that "Fuller had been on the Executive Republican Committee" of Alabama.
"Rob said that they had come up with an idea to prosecute Don with Richard Scrushy," she testified. "He basically said that they had come up with an idea to re-indict Don and that they were going to include Richard Scrushy, and they had figured out a way to do it."
"Rob implied that Don Siegelman had gotten money illegally from Richard Scrushy," she says. "That's what his tale was."
That involved the allegations that Scrushy had written two $250,000 checks to pay off the debt on Siegelman's campaign to try and pass a lottery for education in the state, a campaign that was stymied by out-of-state gambling interests tied to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Christian Coalition and other politically conservative forces.
Rob Riley did not return a phone call seeking comment, but he has denied Ms. Simpson's version of events to a Birmingham newspaper and the Associated Press of Alabama.
Ms. Simpson goes into great detail on how she tried to avoid getting directly involved in the investigation. She wanted to avoid making sworn charges against a federal judge. She tried to talk to one of Siegelman's lawyers to pass along what she knew, but he never called her back. So she talked to Alabama Bar Association attorneys, who urged her that she had an ethical and moral duty to report what she knew to Scrushy's lawyers, which she did, in writing.
But as the case proceeded in Montgomery and Siegelman's and Scrushy's attorneys were unable to win the judge's recusal due to his conflict of interest, she says she ultimately decided to write and sign the affidavit, because, "I thought it was the right thing to do."
"I did not think that what he was doing was right," she says. "Being a federal judge and being in a closely held corporation…"
She was also troubled when the judge sealed the files on the motion for him to recuse himself, then spoke in public about it but placed a gag order on the defense lawyers - yet the prosecution team also talked to the press in public about the case.
"He sealed the evidence, and I read the papers where he got out and spoke, but had them sealed where they couldn't speak, and the prosecutor spoke," she says. "And I just thought that this is not right, and I went ahead and I did the affidavit on the phone call."
In the phone call on Nov. 18, 2002, the same day Siegelman conceded that election in the closest contest for governor in state history, Ms. Simpson says former Alabama Supreme Court justice Terry Butts made claims that he could get Siegelman to concede the election.
Mr. Butts denies any recollection of the phone call.
The reason Ms. Simpson was in on the conference call was that she had been doing political dirty tricks as a volunteer for the Riley campaign. She had gone to a rally of the Ku Klux Klan in Scottsboro and taken photos of Democrat lawyer Parker Edmistons putting up Riley for governor signs. He thought he was doing a dirty trick on Riley. But what he didn't know was that the Riley campaign had set him up and they planned to use photos of the incident against Democrats, somehow, including Don Siegelman.
While Siegelman has denied it, Ms. Simpson's testimony shows she is still convinced that the photos of the Klan rally had something to do with Siegelman's concession.
The other reason Ms. Simpson says she signed the affidavit and agreed to testify about this incident was because of "dirty, untrue" research she was asked to do by the Riley campaign.
In the fall of 2006, a Riley campaign worker came by her office and asked her to meet with the governor at a birthday party at Alabama band member Randy Owens' house in Ft. Payne.
"But anyway, the thing is this, the governor was having a birthday party out there and they wanted me to meet with them to talk about some campaign stuff," Ms. Simpson says. "And this lawyer asked me to do some things I did not feel comfortable with."
The questioners for the House Judiciary Committee do not probe further on this, but from previous reporting in the Locust Fork Journal, it is obvious she is talking about a plan by the Riley campaign to frame a powerful Democrat in the Alabama Legislature for something he did not do.
That was the last straw that caused Ms. Simpson to turn against the Riley's and no longer remain a loyal Riley-Bush Republican. Her testimony is tantamount to the sworn statements of a federal whistleblower. And it is critical to understanding how the Bush White House worked when it came to using the federal court system to seek Republican victories in elections around the country, including Alabama.
Editor's Note: Any press reports that ignore this and focus on other parts of the testimony are at least misleading and at worst part of an orchestrated coverup to try and protect the political fortunes of Bob Riley and George Bush, and to potentially prevent the indictment of former White House Aide Karl Rove, who resigned in August as these charges were coming to light. Rove and other White House aides are still in defiance of Congressional subpoenas under a broad claim of executive privilege.
Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) released the transcript from the sworn testimony of Dana Jill Simpson, an Alabama attorney who earlier this year executed an affadavit that has stirred renewed interest in the prosecution and subsequent conviction of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. In the affadavit and the closed-door interview with committee staff, she cites conversations that allege Karl Rove's involvement in the decision to prosecute Siegelman.
The issue is expected to be covered during an upcoming joint subcommittee hearing titled, "Allegations of Selective Prosecution: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System."
The hearing was originally scheduled to take place Thursday, October 11, but was postponed due to a change in the congressional schedule. The hearing is expected to be rescheduled soon. Below you'll find a summary of points from the interview.
Points from the Sworn On-the-Record Interview
1. Ms. Simpson stated under oath that she adheres to and stands by the statements in her May 21, 2007, affidavit. (Pages 85-86) She testified: “What I understood, or what I believed Mr. Canary to be saying, was that he had had this ongoing conversation with Karl Rove about Don Siegelman, and that Don Siegelman was a thorn to them and basically he was going to – he had been talking with Rove. Rove had been talking with the Justice Department, and they were pursuing Don Siegelman as a result of Rove talking to the Justice Department at the request of Bill Canary.” (27)
2. Ms. Simpson described a 2005 conversation with Rob Riley in which Mr. Riley stated that, in late 2004, Karl Rove had contacted the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice to press for further prosecution of Don Siegelman, and had also stated that the case would be assigned to a federal judge who “hated” Mr. Siegelman and who would “hang Don Siegelman.” (50-57) According to Ms. Simpson, Mr. Riley stated:
* that the case against Don Siegelman in the Northern District had been “miserably messed up” by United States Attorney Alice Martin and had been dismissed by a federal Judge in 2004 (48-50);
* that, with that case out of the way, Mr. Siegelman was “the biggest threat” to Governor Bob Riley – Rob Riley’s father – in the coming 2006 Governor’s race (48);
* that, in late 2004, Bill Canary and Governor Riley had spoken to Karl Rove about Mr. Siegelman and that Rove had approached the head of the Public Integrity section of the Department about bringing another case against Mr. Siegelman and giving more resources to the prosecution (50-52);
* that the new case against Mr. Siegelman would be brought in the Middle District of Alabama and would be assigned to Chief Judge Mark Fuller, whom Rob Riley knew from college (50-53);
* that “Fuller would hang Don Siegelman” because he believed Mr. Siegelman had caused Fuller to be audited in a former position which had exposed some questionable financial dealings by Fuller (56-57); and
* that Mr. Siegelman would be indicted on charges related to Richard Scrushy because Mr. Scrushy was very unpopular and it would be useful to link the two men together. (84-85, 106).
In fact, several months after this conversation described by Ms. Simpson, Governor Siegelman and Richard Scrushy were indicted in the Middle District of Alabama on May 17, 2005 and the case was assigned to Judge Fuller.
3. During the interview, Ms. Simpson responded to some of the comments that have been made in recent months regarding the statements in her May 21, 2007, affidavit:
* Ms. Simpson explained why she believes that the “Karl” discussed in the conversation described in her May 21, 2007, affidavit was Karl Rove. (25-26.)
* Ms. Simpson identified telephone records reflecting the November 18, 2002, call described in her May 21, 2007, affidavit. (29-30, 32) She also identified other phone calls between her and Rob Riley during the 2002 campaign season, and identified a series of letters showing that she has regularly worked on legal matters with Mr. Riley since 1998. (30-34)
* Ms. Simpson testified that the affidavit she executed on May 21, 2007, had a narrow focus and only covered the events and circumstances surrounding the November 18, 2002, telephone call – and did not include all the information known to her that was potentially relevant to the Siegelman prosecution – because she had only been asked to prepare an affidavit on that phone conversation. (81, 140.) Ms. Simpson further stated that she had been reluctant to become involved in the matter and had delayed some time before concluding that she was obligated to prepare and execute her affidavit. (70, 73-74, 79.)
* Ms. Simpson testified that she is a lifelong Republican, who has worked on political campaigns for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, and Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, among others. (7-11)
House Judiciary Committee to Release Simpson Transcript Wednesday
The House Judiciary Committee will apparently release the transcript of North Alabama lawyer and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson's deposition in the investigation of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on Wednesday, sources say.
Picasso's depiction of Don Quixote
The release was delayed today, since a hearing scheduled before the committee on Thursday on the issue of the political prosecution of Democrats around the country by the Bush Justice Department was delayed due to the funeral of Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., a spokeswoman for the committee confirmed.
Copies of the transcript were apparently leaked to some news organizations by a staff member for one of the minority, Republican members of the committee, in violation of an agreement with Ms. Simpson and her attorney, which resulted in a misleading blog post today on the Newhouse, Advent Communications Website al.com.
We will have a full story on Ms. Simpson's testimony on Wednesday, along with a link to the entire transcript, after the committee makes its formal announcement.
Also, apparently Time magazine is planning another story about the Siegelman case that may come out on its Website on Wednesday, sources say.
Meanwhile, for some interesting reading, check out Scott Horton's essay today on the Harpers.org Website on Cervantes’s Golden Age. I guess the Cervantes fictional character Don Quixote, the man of la Mancha, was about a little more than a crazy man tilting at windmills after all, eh?
Don’t be consumed in the quest for needful things ... the real quest leads inward. Beware of the vanities of the world, the frivolities of human existence. And remember wherever your life takes you, and whatever love you may seek from time to time, the need for kindness and respect, the essential qualities which make human life worth living. Life will bring pain and hardship, but have the disposition to be modest, to learn, to be kind - and the edge will come off.
It's definitely something to think about in these crazy times, don't you think?
CBS's Sixty Minutes Interviews Jill Simpson for Siegelman Exposé
Feds May Deny Access to Siegelman in Jail
North Alabama attorney and GOP Whistleblower Jill Simpson was interviewed by CBS's Sixty Minutes Sunday in preparation for an upcoming show on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
Sources close to Ms. Simpson and the Sixty Minutes show also say the federal prison system has refused to allow an on-camera interview with Mr. Siegelman in the Louisiana prison he is being held in without the benefit of an appeal bond, although indications are that may change.
"Jill did fabulously," Montgomery attorney Priscilla Duncan said. "She was clear and looked great."
The reporter and producers of the show were also pleased with the way the interview went.
"They were all very happy," she said.
Also, the House Judiciary Committee may release the transcript of Ms. Simpson's deposition before the committee staff and legal counsel from a couple of weeks ago on Tuesday.
Siegelman's Attorneys Respond to Judge on Release Pending Appeal
Attorneys for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman filed a response to Chief U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Fuller's ruling denying Siegelman release pending appeal today, saying the Montgomery judge failed to follow the order of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to explain his ruling.
“The court’s summary denial without explanation is a clear indication that the ruling denying release pending appeal is unsupportable," according to Hiram C. Eastland, a new appeals attorney brought onboard from Mississippi. "By ignoring (the appeals court's) instructions to 'explain the reasons for the court’s ruling,' the district court has in effect admitted that any real discussion of the issues would compel the release of Governor Siegelman.”
Democrats Call for Sessions' Recusal in Siegelman Investigation
Alabama Democratic Party Executive Director Jim Spearman is calling on U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to offer a formal recusal of his activities related to Senate Judiciary Committee investigations or hearings related to controversies at the U.S. Department of Justice, and more specifically any future investigations or hearings related to the matter of former Governor Don Siegelman, according to a press release.
On July 24, 2007 Senator Sessions made the following comments to the Birmingham News regarding a congressional investigation into the case of Don Siegelman:
"We have to be very careful that politicians don't interfere in an ongoing criminal case," Sessions said. He is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. Attorney from Mobile.
"I'm just dubious of us having a bunch of high-profile hearings, which are basically political, about matters that are being litigated in the courts," he said.
These comments were preceded by an article in the New York Times which reports on a White House email commenting on Sessions' willingness to consider politics.
"WH political reached out to Sen. Sessions and requested that he ask helpful questions to make clear that Tim Griffin is qualified to serve," according to a January 2007 e-mail message from Monica Goodling, a former senior aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to other department officials. "Here are the talkers on Griffin, as well as a narrative that can be used by staff, and his résumé. I think it would actually be helpful for all of the Rs (Republicans) to have it."
Just last week, TIME magazine revealed interviews by the U.S. Attorney's office in the Middle District of Alabama that show their star witness in the Siegelman prosecution, Mr. Lanny Young, also testified to authorities that he had made contributions of cash, unreported goods, and pass through contributions attributed to other persons in violation of FEC law to aid Senator Sessions' 1996 campaign.
No investigation was ever pursued by the U.S. Attorney or the DOJ on this allegation and Senator Sessions nor his campaign were asked to explain the nature of this matter. In addition, the Federal Elections Commission was not notified about these potentially illegal transactions.
"The Senator's public statement discouraging Congress from looking into the Siegelman case was self-serving and could be perceived as an attempt to impede discovery of improper acts on the part of his previous campaigns," Spearman said. "As a former United States' Attorney and Attorney General for the State of Alabama, Senator Sessions certainly recognizes the implications of the questions raised in the TIME article. In the interest of justice, impartiality, and to remove any hint that Senator Sessions' service at a congressional hearing could taint the outcome, I publicly call for him to make a formal recusal from participation in these matters before the Senate Judiciary Committee."
Mr. Sessions could not be reached for comment on Clumbus Day, a national holiday.
The Truth About The Truth in the Siegelman Prosecution
From a journalist, columnist and Web publisher who is anything but 'out-of-state'
by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
The Locust Fork (Alabama) News and Journal
Also working under a grant from The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund
Acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin is grasping at straws as his legal career as a "career prosecutor" is near its end.
Since the Montgomery TV news station WSFA 12 decided to publish his entire recent statement as news with no context or rebuttal or original reporting, and since Mr. Franklin has decided to try and attack us as "out-of-state" anything, we better take his contrived words written in Washington apart.
"Recently, a number of articles, editorials, and postings on blogs have been authored by 'out-of-state' reporters, columnists, and bloggers about the investigation and prosecution of Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy," he says.
Well, not all of us at the Locust Fork News and Journal, the Anniston Star, the Decatur Daily, etc. are "out of state."
In fact, we are right here in the neighborhood, and watched Mr. Franklin botch his first attempt at convicting Richard Scrushy in Birmingham. He was about as lame a lawyer as I've seen in my 27 years of covering trials.
"Though these media reports appear to be part of an orchestrated disinformation campaign about the case," he says - seeming to attempt to take a page out of Karl Rove's playbook, although really, it is Karl Rove's playbook - "...they have generated questions that I want to address once and for all on the record because I believe the public has a right to know the truth."
Now considering for a second that Mr. Franklin has any inkling of what the truth is, he certainly doesn't seem to be telling it in this case. And his comments may now be used against him in future cases.
"Leura Canary was not involved, in any way, in any of the decisions about who would and would not be prosecuted," he claims. But we know the truth, don't we?
As we seem to recall, she was the one who brought the prosecution against Siegelman in Montgomery, after Bill Pryor tried and then got himself a seat on the appeals court without Senate confirmation, cozying up to Mr. Bush while Congress was in recess.
"Her recusal was scrupulously honored by me," Franklin lies. There is ample evidence - and who would have it any other way - that of course they talked about the biggest case in town. The question is, what were they drinking and snorting when they talked about it?
So show us the documents, and especially that backdated recusal motion, and stop hiding behind a dead court reporter for refusing to release any of the trial records in this case, and most especially the trial transcript.
And would some able reporter please look into this dead court reporter please?
Even one of my most conservative focus group members on these points said tonight after hearing that story, "OK, now you can safely move into conspiracy theory territory."
"As the Acting United States Attorney in the case, I made all decisions about the case after consultation with other 'career prosecutors'," Franklin claims
Right.
"Any assertion or insinuation to the contrary is an outright falsehood and a lie," he says.
We will see, now won't we? As Jill Simpson likes to say, "Justice always prevails in the end. It really does."
"All viable federal felony offenses discovered during the investigation were appropriately and properly addressed," Franklin says. "Political party affiliation played no role in 'my' decision making."
Here was an assistant normally reserved for token research, trying a case because he was black, now taking credit for the entire scheme to run a political prosecution of Don Siegelman? Highly unlikely and most likely an outright lie.
"Our entire investigative file was turned over to the dozens of extremely able lawyers hired to represent the accused and all information discovered during the investigation was available to them to use in their defense in any way cognizable under the Constitution of the United States," Franklin blathers on, digging an even deeper whole for himself for the record.
"Common sense suggests that if a viable motion for selective prosecution existed, it would have been filed."
What?
"Simply put, no motion alleging selective prosecution was filed because there were no facts to support it."
Are you kidding me?
It would just not have occurred to Siegelman's defense team, even after the Jill Simpson affidavit surfaced. They don't seem to understand all this political stuff involved in a legal case. They are accustomed to law book research, not political prosecutions. In fact, it never occurred to them that there is such a thing, because there is not supposed to be such a thing in American jurisprudence.
"The comments of a few Monday morning quarterback writers, editors, and bloggers to the contrary are either a deliberate effort to deceive or are occurring because they do not have all the facts available to them," Franklin claims. "For a variety of reasons, these media members are unwilling to accept the inevitable result of facts being laid bare in the crucible of the federal criminal courtroom. This case was fully litigated in an open forum where everyone was compelled by law to speak the truth." blah, blah, blah, blah...
"In this context, Siegelman's and Scrushy's peers convicted them because they are guilty of public corruption offenses," Franklin says.
But any close observer of the events should know, and we reported this as it happened, the jury was hopelesslly hung, to the point of fisticuffs. Any honest judge would have declared a mistrial on that fateful Friday.
That is until the Chief Judge who controls the courthouse in Montgomery, down to the locks on the doors, Mr. Fuller, issued a dynamite charge of all dyn-o-mite charges, telling them he had a lifetime appointment and he could wait as long as it would take for them to reach a verdict.
So they went home and at least a couple of them started reading news coverage online and e-mailing other members of the jury asking them to reach a guilty verdict so they could all, finally, go home. And afterall, that's what the judge seemed to want.
But, Mr. Franklin continues.
"Any unbiased review of the evidence discovered during this investigation and the manner in which the investigation was conducted will reveal the incredible commitment to the public interest and dedication to duty of the federal and state agents working under 'my' supervision. I am proud of them and the work they did. The taxpayers should be as well."
Well, I know of a whole bunch of taxpayers who are beginning to ask serious questions, along with the Congress of the United States, and the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
And that does include a few out of state columnists and bloggers, some of whom happen to be much better lawyers than Mr. Franklin ever will be...
Judge Fuller Refuses to Release Siegelman on Appeal
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller has refused to release former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on bond while his case is appealed, according to the Alabama bureau of the Associated Press.
ABA
Judge Mark Fuller
Fuller ruled that Siegelman has not shown that he has a substantial chance of winning his case on appeal, apparently, without issuing any more of an explanation than he did the first time he ordered Siegelman and HealthSouth's Richard Scrushy to jail without the benefit of an appeal bond.
Fuller's ruling applies only to Siegelman, apparently, while a similar request from Scrushy is pending.
The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta had ordered Fuller to hold another hearing on the issue and to explain his ruling. Is he thumbing his nose at the appeals court panel?
Poor ole Bob Johnson worked harder today on his defense of the prosecution team than he did explaining what Judge Fuller actually said in his "four page ruling."
And he also continues to use the same inaccurate and downright false background sentence about U.S. Attorney Leura Canary. "She recused herself from the case in 2002 and turned it over to chief prosecutor Louis Franklin, Feaga and other career prosecutors," the AP reports as fact.
But the case file, which has been viewed by lawyers but not released to the public, shows that Ms. Canary never actually filed a motion for recusal in the case. She allegedly recused herself by press release to an Alabama Newhouse newspaper where a local reporter had a long-standing vendetta against Siegelman. There is also evidence that she was in on discussions about the case with the other prosecutors, including the so-called Public Integrity Division of the Bush Justice Department, which has been shown to be Karl Rove's political arm in these cases under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee.
Of course since the Bush federal courts in Alabama refuse to cooperate with the Web press, and Siegelman's attorneys seem incapable of keeping us informed by e-mail, we will have to dig on Friday to find a copy of Fuller's ruling to comment on.
Friday Update
Thanks to Siegelman supporter Pam Miles, here's the PDF file.
This judge says he does not have the authority to grant Siegelan or Scrushy's release on appeal because his defense has raised no issues which might result in a reversal of the verdict or an order for a new trial. Again, he ignores his own conflict of interest, which the appeals court has yet to rule on, as well as a clear-cut case of a jury improperly going against a federal judge's charge not to read news coverage about the trial or communicate about it except during formal jury deliberations.
His lawyers have filed a motion which raises that issue, but the judge stomped all over it and refused to allow an investigation of the juror e-mails. Implicit in that decision, unstated, is that somehow reading a newspaper on a Website is less than "reading a newspaper" and communicating via e-mail is somehow substantially different from, say, whispering gossip?
Clayton Lamar "Lanny" Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," who was a key witness for the feds in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, has now been tied to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions and federal judge William Pryor Jr. in a cover story by Time magazine.
Looks like Karl Rove's plan for a Republican takeover of American politics for a generation is unraveling fast, and sphincters must be tightening up in Washington, Montgomery and Atlanta today as this story reverberates.
The case of Don Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama who was convicted last year on corruption charges by a tainted jury, has become a flash point in the debate over the politicization of the Bush Justice Department, according to Time, which reports today that the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Siegelman case could start as early as October 11.
WSJ
Transcripts of Young's statements to the FBI have been obtained by Time and will no doubt add fuel to charges that the Bush Administration pursued selective justice in Alabama.
The fact that no charges were ever looked at related to Young's illegal support of Sessions, Pryor and other Republicans will only heighten suspicions that the Siegelman prosecution was a case of selective justice, and adds proof that in the Bush Administration, enforcing the law has been a partisan pursuit all along.
Also, this must be one of the worst days of his life for little Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. The conservative Wall Street Journal has a story today showing how corrupt Sessions is when it comes to writing legislation for the banking industry, which not only supports his political campaigns and his drive for "tort reform," but an industry from which he and his family derive direct financal benefits.
There's no way his hardcore right-wing supporters can blame this on the "liberal press."
Congress Will Hold Hearing on Siegelman Prosecution
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.
Appeals Court Remands Siegelman Sentencing Back to Trial Judge
by Glynn Wilson
(LFJ) - The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has ordered a new hearing before Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller on the issue of whether former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman should be released from prison pending the outcome of his appeal.
A three-judge panel remanded the case back to Fuller, arguing that it appears as if Siegelman's lawyers never properly filed a motion for his release on appeal. The ruling also seems to take the judge to task for discussing the issue of Siegelman's release on appeal and not fully explaining why the former governor was jailed immediately instead.
"The district court made comments in the course of denying Siegelman’s motion to surrender voluntarily to prison which may reasonably be interpreted as a finding that Siegelman was ineligible for release pending appeal," the ruling indicates. "Regarding Siegelman’s motion for release pending appeal, the Government’s response to the motion, and Siegelman’s reply to the Government’s response are hereby REMANDED on a limited basis, for expeditions consideration and disposition by the district court. The district court’s order should explain the reasons for the court’s ruling."
According to Redding Pitt, one of Siegelman's attorneys, Fuller would not allow the defense to even make a motion on the issue of his remaining free on appeal. The judge ruled Siegelman was not eligible under federal rules.
"The court at sentencing would not let us make the motion, much less make an argument in support," Mr. Pitt said. "That is what the appeals court is referring to in a portion of the opinion."
What the ruling means in lay terms, according to Siegelman supporter Pam Miles, is that "Judge Fuller denied release pending appeal on the day of sentencing. In sending Siegelman directly to jail, it is implied that Fuller must have had a good reason for his actions even though they have not been stated.
"Siegelman should have appealed to Fuller in writing instead of directly to (the) 11th circuit. However, the (appeals panel) states that they understand why Siegelman didn’t do this," she says. "It is certainly implied that they are referring to the act of shackling and taking him to prison that night."
"Accordingly," she says, "the (appeals panel) is asking Fuller to formally rule on the appeal bond motions with a full explanation of his ruling."
One source who is familier with this case, and how legal appeals work in the South, says it is likely that the appeals panel has indicated to Fuller that he better release Siegelman (and Scrushy?) - or they will.
Scottsboro Klan Video Proves Simpson's Case in Siegelman Prosecution
This video courtesy of the Scottsboro Police Department in North Alabama shows former head of the Jackson County Democratic Party, Parker Edmistons, "knocking up" Bob Riley for Governor signs at a Ku Klux Klan rally on the Jackson County Courthouse lawn Nov. 16, 2002, just days after the election while a legal recount fight proceeded. He's the one in the black sweat shirt and jeans also seen hobnobbing with members of the Klan and Jackson County Sheriff's deputies. Sources say this double-barrelled political dirty trick may have been set up or leaked by another lawyer who was a member of the same machine fraternity at the University of Alabama as the governor's son Rob Riley - working both sides of the political fence. Since Jill Simpson was on assignment for the Riley campaign taking photos of this dirty trick to use against Democrats, including Siegelman, this video, along with Ms. Simpson's phone records, prove there was a Klan rally and a phone call - in direct contradiction to public statements reported in the Alabama press from Republican and business officials associated with Bush political aide Karl Rove. He resigned from the White House in August. The reason Ms. Simpson was in on the conference call - a call now reported around the world - was precisely because of her involvement in "researching" the Riley-Klan incident.
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U.S. Representative Artur Davis (D-Ala.) issued a stinging rebuke of the Bush Justice Department today following a ruling by the department that it would not release documents requested by the House Judiciary Committee connected with suspected selective prosecutions in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"On September 4, 2007, the Department of Justice informed the House Judiciary Committee that it would not honor the Committee’s request for internal documents related to the prosecution of Don Siegelman. In my opinion, the Department’s position is too broad and has no sound legal basis," Davis says.
"None of these documents implicate privacy concerns of any known individuals. There has already been an extensive public airing of the allegations around Siegelman and his alleged co-conspirators, and it strains credulity to think that the protection of Siegelman’s reputation is a concern of the Department," Davis says. "Nor is there any statutory provision that ensures the confidentiality of internal Department of Justice deliberations. To the contrary, as the committee’s official response points out, there are several recent precedents for the department divulging deliberative materials relating to allegations of misconduct by the department.
"The Department’s ultimate claim is the kind of expansive executive privilege doctrine this Administration has advanced before. In my opinion," Davis says, "the executive branch’s interest in keeping its deliberations secret has some weight, but it is at its weakest outside the context of national security and it must be balanced against Congress’s constitutionally derived authority of oversight. It cannot be that any government agency can unilaterally declare its decisions off limits to the very Congress that funds that agency and that passes the laws that agency enforces.
"Finally, and most astonishingly, the Department seems to assert that Congress’s oversight role is somehow limited because some of the factual accusations surrounding the Siegelman case are, in the Department’s opinion, strained or not corroborated," he says. "It is simply not within the Department’s authority to make itself the arbiter of whether a congressional inquiry merits compliance. Surely an agency of lawyers is not so blind to the constitutional meaning of the separation of powers."
House Judiciary Committee to Interview Simpson in Siegelman Investigation
by Glynn Wilson
A letter made public today by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., confirms that the U.S. House Judiciary Committee staff and legal counsel will interview North Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson Friday, Sept. 14, in Washington as part of an ongoing investigation into the political corruption of the judicial system by the Bush White House and Justice Department.
Some legal experts say the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is one of the most revealing cases in the country on that score, and it was Ms. Simpson's affidavit sworn in May that brought the relevant facts about an unfair trial into the light of public scrutiny.
While the initial Congressional investigation was focused on the firing of 8 specific U.S. attorneys who were fired for apparent political purposes, new investigations are turning up more cases around the country. And then there's Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence, coming just on the heals of Siegelman's sentencing and jailing in June.
The letter from Conyers was addressed to Priscilla Duncan of Montgomery, one of Simpson's lawyers, and makes an appointment for 12:30 p.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Ms. Simpson's statement will be taken under oath and will be transcribed for the record in the investigation.
The press secretary for Conyers and the Committee said she could not confirm or deny the appointment, on or off the record. But she did confirm on ongoing investigation into political prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department, and that a number of witnesses are being interviewed and "all relevant information is being looked at."
No date has been set for a public hearing that will be broadcast live on C-SPAN.
Simpson, who has worked as a volunteer for many Republican candidates over the past 25 years, including Gov. Bob Riley's campaigns in 2002 and 2006, is now seen as a major whistleblower against certain elements within the GOP. She could potentially have an impact on future political races in Alabama if she were to switch her allegiance and bring her legal research capabilities over to the Democratic Party.
Siegelman Letter Says Karl Rove Behind Prosecution
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman says in a letter written from federal prison that he is confident his conviction will be overturned and a congressional probe will show that Republican politics was behind the probe of his Democratic administration, according to a story just out from the Associated Press.
Siegelman says in the letter that presidential aide Karl Rove was behind the federal investigation, and is quoted as saying:
"I am also encouraged by The Congressional inquiry and upcoming investigation which should prove the political involvement and establish this Alabama case as the 'Watergate' of 2008."
Of course Karl Rove resigned from the White House last week effective at the end of August, although he is still facing Congressional subpoenas in an ongoing investigation into the political manipulation of justice by the Bush administration, although the White House is still claiming executive privilege.
The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has rejected a time-sensitive motion by attorneys for Richard Scrushy asking for the preservation of evidence related to alleged juror misconduct, but significantly, the three-judge panel ordered oral arguments to be scheduled in the appeal.
The defense motion asked that subpoenas be issued to preserve juror e-mails alleged to be a violation of standard jury instructions against reading the news media and discussing cases outside the jury room.
"We express no view on the merits of any issue which may be raised in this appeal, and nothing in this order should be construed as such," the panel said in its order. But it directed the clerk "to schedule this appeal for oral argument once briefing has been completed."
In 75 percent of the cases to come before an appeals panel, the cases are decided on the briefs submitted by the parties, while oral arguments are only heard in roughly 25 percent of the cases, according to the appeals court's Website.
The three-judge panel is made up of the following:
Judge R. Lanier Anderson was nominated by President Jimmy Carter and appointed to the court on August 6, 1979 (then 5th Circuit). He is a graduate of Yale College and the Harvard Law School. He was in private practice prior to being named judge.
Judge Susan H. Black was nominated by President George H.W. Bush and appointed on August 12, 1992. She is a native of Valdosta, Georgia, a graduate of Florida State University and the University of Florida College of Law. She previously sat as a district judge for the Middle District of Florida from 1979-1992.
Judge Frank M. Hull is a native of Augusta, Georgia appointed to the court on October 3, 1997. Judge Hull, a female judge, was nominated by President Clinton is a graduate of the Emory University School of Law. She came to the 11th Circuit from the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia.
Scrushy was convicted of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges in June 2006 along with former Governor Don Siegelman. Scrushy is currently serving his sentence at a federal prison camp in Texas. Siegelman is housed in a Louisiana prison.
Scrushy Attorneys Demand New Trial Due to Jury Misconduct
by Glynn Wilson
Attorneys for former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy have filed a motion demanding a new trial on the basis of juror misconduct with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Attorneys for former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman have not filed their paperwork in the appeal as of yet for reasons that are unclear.
In the motion for a new trial and to preserve documents filed this week by attorney Art Leach, a number of e-mail messages and news articles about the e-mail messages are included as exhibits. The bottom line is that if the e-mails are not forgeries, and there is no evidence or indication that they are, then jurors in the Siegelman-Scrushy trial in Montgomery violated the standard jury charge demanding that they not read news media coverage of the case or discuss the case amongst themselves outside the jury room.
In one message included in the text of the motion, one juror says, "I was confused between all the evidence and other Internet stuff and information that some jurors brought in and was talking about… They were pulling stuff out of files and some were talking about have Internet information and talking about that too."
Evidence is presented that at least two jurors admitted searching the World Wide Web for information on the case in the news media online, and tried to use that information to pressure other jurors to come to a guilty verdict on that basis - not on the basis of evidence presented at trial.
The motion asks Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller to hold a hearing and examine the jurors under oath about their online media consumption and discussing the case via e-mail. It asks that all juror computers be preserved as evidence to prevent the destruction of documents and that jurors provide all of their e-mail addresses and IP addresses to the court.
According to the motion, the judge was in error when he "never asked a single juror if he/she received or sent any of the e-mails as they appeared" in the exhibits presented at trial.
Some of the information apparently accessed by jurors included a transcript of a WSFA TV Courtroom Chronicles blog that included evidence presented before the judge when the jury was ordered out of the courtroom - which would in and of itself create prejudice on the part of the jury, according to legal experts.
Attorneys argue in the motion that this is one of those rare cases where documentary evidence could readily, and conclusively, resolve an otherwise complicated, difficult, legal issue.
"Here, if the purported e-mails are authenticated, then it is apparent that the jury was exposed to extrinsic evidence that was prejudicial to (the defendants) and that (they are) entitled to a new trial," the motion reads.
It accuses the judge in this case of "failing to conduct a meaningful investigation" into the alleged juror misconduct, which would be sufficient grounds for a new trial on appeal.
According to well-established precedent in the U.S. justice system, there is a long-standing requirement that a jury's verdict must be based on the "evidence developed at trial" and that principle "goes to the fundamental integrity of all that is embraced in the constitutional concept of trial by jury."
The government in this case has a legal and moral obligation to determine whether the verdict was "tainted."
Also set out in the motion is the unambiguous obligation of a U.S. attorney "that he is the representative of a government dedicated to fairness and equal justice for all and, in this respect, he owes a heavy obligation of fairness to the accused."
It does not appear that this was the case here, and according to legal experts, an order for a new trial is warranted.
Editor's Note: In the face of a crass attempt by the Bush White House and the U.S. attorneys office in Montgomery to spin their way out of a mounting effort on Capitol Hill to investigate the blatant politicization of justice in America, we are publishing this summarized version of the Jill Simpson affidavit story for the records of the House Judiciary Committee and to clear up public misunderstandings in this case caused by poor local reporting. We are prepared, along with Rainsville attorney Dana Jill Simpson, to testify against these mean spirited and corrupt public officials if the opportunity arises. There comes a time in the life of a news organization when it becomes necessary to stand up against tyranny. This is one of those times.
by Glynn Wilson
If there is any state in the Union where the Bush White House and Karl Rove have manipulated the justice system of America for political purposes, it is Alabama. The relentless political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat, by Bush appointed Republican prosecutors and a Republican judge, is the most compelling case now before Congress and the courts, legal experts say.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman
"So far the evidence coming out of the U.S. attorneys scandal points to political motivation in prosecutions or the suppression of prosecutions in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and California, but the strongest case so far, and the one where the direct involvement of Karl Rove is most apparent, is in Alabama, a state where Rove's roots and political connections run very deep," New York attorney Scott Horton said in an interview. He has followed the case closely and writes a column at Harpers.org called No Comment.
While Siegelman claimed for years that the federal prosecution of him was "political," no one listened until May of this year.
A month before his sentencing on bribery charges, a Republican lawyer from Rainsville in the northeast corner of Alabama named Dana Jill Simpson wrote and signed a sworn affidavit with evidence that the case had been directed from the White House and the governor's mansion from the outset.
Bush Justice Department Continues Obfuscation in Siegelman Case
The U.S. attorneys office in Montgomery, Alabama, continues to show it has no regard for truth or justice by issuing a press release today attacking the national news media's coverage of the case and including numerous false and misleading statements in a press release posted on a Department of Justice Website.
Sources say former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has been moved again, this time to Oakdale, Louisiana.
In a phone call to Les Siegelman, he reportedly said, "I'm in Oakdale, Louisiana. Texarkana didn't want me because of too many calls coming in from the press.conditions are better here. The people are nice and respectful. The food isn't any better, although I can buy more things to eat, so I am fine. Thank you for everything, please keep working."
Now he can receive mail if people want to write. The address is:
Don Siegelman
24775-001
F.B.O.P.
P.O. Box 5060
Oakdale, LA 71463
It reportedly takes a long time for the mail to get processed and delivered, and all mail will be opened and perhaps copied and sent to the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, sources say. He still cannot receive visitors except immediate family members at this time.
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Reps. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), Artur Davis (D-Ala.), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today asking him to provide documents and information about several prominent prosecutions and convictions of Democratic officials across the country.
The Committee is exploring claims that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman’s recent conviction, among others, may have been part of a pattern of selective, political prosecutions by a number of U.S. Attorneys across the country.
In the letter, the lawmakers cite the Siegelman case, the recently overturned conviction of Wisconsin state official Georgia Thompson, and the prosecution of Dr. Cyril Wecht, a coroner in Pennsylvania.
Forty-four attorneys general from 40 of the 50 states signed a petition to the United States Congress today demanding a formal inquiry into the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman,
According to New York attorney Scott Horton, who writes a column for the Harpers magazine Website, Siegelman was "falsely charged, tried and convicted in federal court proceedings in Alabama. These proceedings constitute an indelible stain on the reputation of our nation for justice, which cannot be purged until they are set aside and those who committed these crimes mockingly in the name of justice are held to account for their misconduct."
The U.S. Marshal's service is playing not so funny games with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, moving him around on a bizarre tour of the federal prison system, feeding him bologna sandwiches, and submitting him to who knows what else in the way of mental torture. The only reading material he is allowed is the King James Bible, which may be a violation of the First Amendment's admonition about the separation of church and state. First he was housed in Atlanta along with Richard Scrushy, then moved in the middle of the night to Texarkana though Michigan, New York and Oklahoma.
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman was moved from a federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia late Tuesday night to Texarkana, Texas, sources say.
The Bureau of Prisons says while they try to designate prisoners to within 500 miles of their home and keep them in their home region, but apparently that doesn’t apply to Siegelman. He was moved out of the official Southeast prison region.
The best way to get information on Siegelman is the Website Bop.Gov by using Siegelman's inmate number: 24775-001.
A concise timeline of the Siegelman case compiled by Siegelman supporters:
8 year investigation begun in 1999 by Rove Client - Attorney General Bill Pryor.
Investigation is picked up by Feds in 2000 and subsequently directed by US attorney who is the wife of top-level GOP operative and associate of Karl Rove.
Siegelman asks for US Attorney’s recusal in 2002 (No recusal documents ever produced)
Indicted in 04 by Northern District US Attorney. Charges thrown out with prejudice.
Indicted in 05 on 37 counts.
Brought to trial on 35 of those counts one month before Democratic primary in 2006.
Convicted on 7 counts in 2006.
Bribery conviction without benefit to either party proven. No direct or personal benefit to Siegelman whatsoever.
Evidence of Juror Misconduct not investigated by USA or Trial Judge – Bush appointee Mark Fuller.
Fuller denies recusal motion based on his financial interests in National military contracting firm that provides services to the FBI.
TIME Magazine article on June 1 detailing affidavit from GOP lawyer linking white house interest and US attorney’s husband to Siegelman investigation.
Investigative reporter Glynn Wilson tells the full story of Bush Justice Department manipulation of justice in Alabama and the Jill Simpson affidavit story on the record in the Locust Fork Journal.
Karl Rove associate Toby Roth attacks affidavit in June article in The Birmingham News.
Sentenced to 7.3 years on June 29. One half of sentencing guideline steps used by trial judge based on acquitted charges and Siegelman’s public comments about the political implications of his case – deemed “failure to accept responsibility.”
Taken from courtroom, shackled and driven to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in dead of night.
New York Times Editorial on June 30 calling for congressional inquiry into Siegelman Case.
Alabama Congressman Artur Davis sends letter on July 6 to Judiciary Committee Chairman seeking investigation into Siegelman case.
Siegelman is moved to Texarkana, Texas sometime during the night of July 10.
"Oh, Alabama … Your Cadillac has got a wheel in the ditch, and a wheel off the tracks…"
- Neil Young, Harvest, 1972
At least one Alabama newspaper, The Huntsville Times, is now calling for a Congressional investigation into the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
"U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, a Birmingham Democrat, has every right to ask the House Judiciary Committee to look into the federal government's prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman," the paper says in an editorial today.
Meanwhile, in another political miscarriage of justice, the feds in Montgomery will put former Secretary of State Nancy Worley on trial beginning today on weak charges that she violated election laws.
Also in a federal courtroom in Birmingham, in a civil trial set to begin today, union lawyers presented affidavits from two people who allege that Drummond Coal ordered two union leaders killed, a charge the company denies.
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who stood at former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's side in Montgomery last week, is a true Birmingham hero. On December 24, 1956, the Birmingham Klan placed 16 sticks of dynamite under his bedroom window. But he walked out of the heavily damaged house and through the fire alive, and to this day works for civil rights for all Americans.
Locust Fork News and Journal Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson will be on the radio tonight in Birmingham to talk about the investigative series on the Jill Simpson affidavit and the Bush administration's political manipulation of justice. The host is Frank Matthews on WAPI-1070 AM - News Talk: In Your Ear. The show starts at 7:04 p.m. The call line number is: (205) 944-1070.
Deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, along with his wife Leslie, talks to the media in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama on his last day free before being sentenced to six years and 10 months in jail by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Everett Fuller.
The New York Times editorial board is now calling on Congress to investigate the allegations made about Bush Justice Department manipulation of justice in the Jill Simpson affidavit. The editorial page even refers to it as the "Bush Justice Department."
This is a first, and signals some kind of major sea change at the Times. I tried to get the New York Times to show some skepticism of the Bush Justice Department in its handling of the case of HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy back in the winter of 2005.
Instead, U.S. Attorney Alice Martin referred to one of the Times business reporters as her "little buddy." Every correspondent I worked for covering that case demonstrated that all they were interested in was throwing Scrushy in jail for the rest of his life and taking all his money away.
The Times editors in the Business section did not back me up when I was harassed by certain U.S. Marshals at the federal courthouse in Birmingham - simply because I was working for the New York Times and the Times had failed to obtain press credentials in advance of the trial.
The paper also never included in ANY story ANY of my reporting showing that the Scrushy case was in some ways politically motivated.
I have no way of knowing if there has been a major personnel change at the Times or why they have changed their minds. Maybe we can chalk that up to Jill Simpson and her sworn affidavit.
Now if only the House and Senate Judiciary Committees would heed what the "new" Times is saying and call for a full investigation, perhaps we can get to the bottom of this once and for all.
In any event, the reporting on this is not over...
Investigation Into White House Connection to Siegelman Prosecution Continues
The investigation into White House connections to the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy continues by a number of news organizations, although we won't be publishing much about that here until those stories emerge.
Locust Fork News and Journal Editor and Publisher Glynn Wilson is working under a national investigative reporting grant for several national news outlets, all of which require exclusivity for specific stories under development. So it would not be proper for those stories to be foreshadowed or commented on in this space. Links will be provided when those stories are published.
Keep all those tips coming via e-mail. We appreciate all the supportive comments about the work we have accomplished on this site since it's creation as Mr. Scrushy's first trial was underway in 2005 in Birmingham. That was the case that resulted in acquittal.
We will continue to publish here on other subjects as stories arise, so check back often to see what else we've got in store.
For those of you who may be new to this Website, this in an experiment in online publishing produced by experienced journalists and photographers. We mostly focus on the big national stories of the day, although we sometimes explore stories of regional, statewide or even local interest - when they spark our interest - especially concerning politics, science and the natural environment.
In that vein, we are also into wildlife photography, especially birds. So if that floats your boat, check back during the bird migration season in spring and fall.
As always, if you have suggestions for improving the site we would love to hear them, although we can't promise we will be able to implement them all.
Judge Fuller Sentences Siegelman and Scrushy to Jail
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 28 - U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller's voice shook just a little as he shot the middle to try and placate both sides Thursday night by sentencing former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to seven years and four months in federal prison and former HealthSouth CEO to six years and 10 months.
He rejected appeals on the part of the defense to allow both defendants to remain out of jail pending an appeal, and the opportunity to go home with their families and get their affairs in order before voluntarily reporting to prison at a later date. He ordered them into the immediate custory of U.S. Marshalls, handcuffed, shackled, and taken to a federal prision in Atlanta.
"Governor Siegelman, there's no question you've done many great things, and I commend your 30 years of public service," Fuller said. The judge indicated he read the 720 letters sent him "by people of all walks of life" on Siegelman's behalf, including those with great wealth - and more humble beginnings - all of them with the same investment "in this great country."
He called it an "unpleasant responsibility" to have to impose the sentence, but he said: "We both took an oath. By your actions you have violated that oath."
Along with the Bush Justice Department prosecutors in this case, the judge claimed Siegelman and Scrushy damaged public trust in government, while the government's actions in this case may prove to be a worse violation by the time the investigation is all over.
Fuller showed little mercy for Siegelman, fining him $50,000, plus $181,325 in restitution, along with 500 hours of community service upon his release, which could come after six years and eight months, according to attorneys. Or he could have his time reduced by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta - or the three judge panel there could immediately order his release by throwing the tainted case out of court on appeal.
Judge Fuller also showed little mercy on Richard Scrushy - in spite of an impassioned appeal on behalf of his family and his god - fining him $150,000, due immediately, and ordering him to pay restitution of $267,000 along with 500 hours of community service upon his release.
Fuller Increases Siegelman's Possible Prison Time For Talking to the Media
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 28 - U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller added five to seven years to the possible prison sentence of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman today - for talking to the media.
Instead of a possible 10 year sentence, Siegelman is looking at the possibility of 15 to 19 years behind bars, simply for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, attorneys said.
The judge is using a system of federal guidelines established for sentencing defendants in federal cases based on a quantitative grid system. It's a 1-43 point system based on court precedents for average sentences given for different kinds of crimes. Defendants can have time taken off for good works, if they are not considered a flight risk, if they show remorse and other things. Points and prison time can be added if they would be considered a risk to go out and commit other crimes or flee, for example.
U.S. government prosecutors argued that Siegelman had engaged in a "propaganda campaign" to "heap disrespect on this court" by talking to the media while awaiting sentencing, which is ironic considering the propaganda devised by Bush political strategist Karl Rove in his long history of manipulating judicial races in Alabama.
Attorney Susan James appealed to the judge to show fairness in the case, and brought up Jill Simpson's affidavit alleging a conspiracy at the highest levels of the federal government to get Siegelman (reported on extensively below). She said the defense team had not intended to bring it up until the appeal, but the aggressive nature of the Bush Justice Department's prosecution of Siegelman and the proposal to add more time to his sentence compelled them to bring up the issue to get it on the record.
Sentencing is expected tonight. There's no free wireless Internet access in the federal courthouse in Montgomery, so for now, you can read the AP story or follow the case on other blogs and the one below.
The WSFA channel 12 blog, Courtroom Chronicles, is back in business this morning. The judge is on the bench and the action has picked back up in Montgomery with more character witnesses.
We are on the way back to Montgomery today for more original reporting. The sentencing could come today, according to WSFA's Helen Hammons.
Judge Adopts Sentencing Guidelines in Siegelman, Scrushy Case
U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller adopted sentencing guidelines Wednesday that could send former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to prison for more than 10 years and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy for more than eight years, according to the AP story.
The judge said Siegelman faces anywhere from 121 months to 151 months with a fine of between $17,500 to $175,000. Scrushy faces 97 months to 121, and a fine of $15,000 to $150,000.
Mr. Fuller does not have to follow the guidelines and can give final sentences that are harsher or more lenient, and he gave no indication of whether he was inclined to allow the defendants to remain out of jail on bail pending the outcome of the appeal
According to the WSFA Courtroom Chronicles blog, which is linked below and now seems out of commission, the trial resumes at 8:30 a.m. with more from lawyers on both sides trying to further reduce - or bump up- the sentencing range.
Then sentencing is supposed to begin in earnest. No word on how long that will take, even from the TV news.
[Updated at 6:04 p.m.]
Woops! Wait...
There's Alan Collins now, in his dapper hat and suit. He say's the sentence "could come on Thursday, but it could drag into Friday."
Trying To Glean What's Happening in Montgomery Using AP
Here's a vignette from the overflow courtroom in the federal courthouse in Montgomery from Tuesday, plus a couple of wire stories from today.
During an afternoon break in the main courtroom where the action is going on, I went over to the overflow courtroom down the hall to check in on the "mainstream media." Most of the reporters covering this trial mostly stay in that room, where they can have their laptops handy and watch the entire proceedings on a TV screen. This includes the free-lance reporter working for the New York Times, who never sat foot in the main courtroom on Tuesday.
The problem is, it's kind of hard to cover the trial from there, since the audio is a tad iffy on the lawyers and the witness stand.
Many of the members of the media, especially photographers and the broadcast reporters, simply hang out in front of the courthouse in the vigil to find out what the sentence will be. For many news organizations, that's all they care about: How long will the feds throw former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy in jail? And how soon?
Well, when I went into the overflow courtroom, there were only three reporters there. But being the joker that I am, I said, in jest, "I just thought I would come over here and harrass the mainstream media."
In response to that, ole Bob Johnson with the Associated Press looked up, smiled and said: "Well, you've come to the wrong place. We're just the Alabama media that is covering up the whole, real story."
Now ole Bob is not one to cover anything up on purpose, I don't think. But I must say, it is hard to glean what is really going on from his wire reports.
One more story on Bob Johnson. Back during the trial of Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore, I was kicked out of a press conference because I was not on the official invitee list Moore's PR people had put together to try and spin the story for the print media. You can read about it here. It was pretty funny.
Well, later on, during the Scrushy trial in Birmingham when I was covering that story for the New York Times, I ran into ole Bob on the street one day on the way back from lunch and had a conversation with him about that day.
He sort of dismissed me on that story, saying the local press had already "heard it all" and were not very interested in my questions, since they had all been asked and answered. But that is not true, because no one ever asked Judge Moore the question I wanted an answer to and never got.
That is, how do two small town Alabama lawyers and Sunday school teachers like himself and Hugo Black come to such drastically different conclusions about the meaning of the Constitution? Bob never asked any question like that and neither did anybody else. In fact, in all my days of popping into Montgomery to cover political and legal stories over the years, I've never seen ole Bob ask any questions at all.
Mostly, he tends to use the same old background paragraphs over and over again and never really do new, original news stories to inform readers in any detail about what is going on. Maybe that's why people think the Alabama press is not getting the story.
I don't know if it is laziness, incompetence or someone higher up telling them no one is interested in the gory details on these stories. But it certainly makes it hard to find out what's really going on in Montgomery.
Will someone down there please explain this quantitative formula Judge Mark Fuller is using to arrive at the prison time for Siegelman and Scrushy? If you don't understand it Bob, ask a damn question or two.
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, one of the couragious early leaders in the Civil Rights Movement from Birmingham, came South to Montgomery from Cincinnati to testify on Don Siegelman's behalf.
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 26 – The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth came all the way back home to Alabama from Ohio in the interest of justice and in support of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a "good man,"
"He's been the target of the Bush Justice Department, which has now endangered the style of government we fought so hard for," he said in an interview during an afternoon courtroom break. "It's tragic after we've come so far in our efforts to vote in good government, where people in office do right."
He quoted Saul talking to Samuel in the Bible: "The people we elect must be JUST in the fear of the Lord," he said, paraphrasing.
He said there have been two tragically critical times like this in our history since African-Americans got the right to vote against these corrupt politicians, who for so long kept them down.
The first was Nixon, who got caught in his corruption and resigned in disgrace.
"He was seeing preachers upstairs, and had the plumbers downstairs," he said, only partly in jest.
Now it is Bush, who allows the justice system to be turned into a Republican hit squad for Democrats, especially black Democrats.
Of the Siegelman case, he said, "This is a deliberate attempt to destroy a good man. He was a rising star in the Democratic Party."
But he doesn't think people have seen the last of Don Siegelman. He said: "I think he'll be back."
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 26 - A Mobile lawyer who is an expert in banking law and campaign finance told a federal judge Don Siegelman did not benefit personally from the contribution Richard Scrushy made to the lottery campaign, a contribution that is at the heart of the Bush Justice Department's case against the former governor and one of Alabama's wealthiest businessmen ever.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
U.S. attorneys Steve Feaga and Louis Franklin
"It wasn't a bribe. I know it wasn't a bribe," insisted John C.H. "Jack" Miller, an attorney with the Miller-Hamilton law firm and former chair of the state Democratic Party.
He described the process of loaning money to third party campaigns, like the lottery fund, and said it was "common practice" in Alabama and across the country for politicians to sign those loans and see that they are paid off later through private donations.
The aggressive prosecution team, led by U.S. Attorney Steve Feaga, objected to Miller's characterization, reminding U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller in the sentencing hearing that a jury had already convicted Siegelman of taking a bribe from Scrushy.
Defense attorney Art Leach objected to that as a mischaracterization of the charges and accused the prosecutors of "badgering the witness."
Miller testified he has known Mr. Siegelman since he was an "up and coming" leader in high school in Mobile. He approved many loans for Siegelman over the years to help finance his campaigns for state offices, and he said Siegelman was the best fund raiser in Alabama political history and never failed to pay any of the loans back, on time.
"His word is as good as gold," Mr. Miller said. "Don Siegelman is a totally honest man."
When asked if he thought Mr. Siegelman was a flight risk, he cracked up everyone in the courtroom when he laughed and said, "No. If he was going to flee, he would already have flown."
When a defense attorney asked Mr. Miller if he thought Siegelman should go to jail for his conviction, he said no.
"It would be a grave miscarriage of justice," he testified, especially since one of his predecessors, Guy Hunt, a Republican, received probation and later a pardon for personally benefiting from taking $200,000 in inaugural funds. A proposal was launched recently by the state legislature to vote him a retirement income, because he is sick and broke up in Cullman.
After Mr. Miller's appearance in court, he said in an interview that he thinks the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta will throw the case out.
He said there is little doubt that the prosecution of Siegelman and Scrushy on the charges presented was "a political persecution."
"This is a rogue prosecutor," he said.
While Judge Fuller has ties to Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's son Rob from his University of Alabama fraternity days and has been accused by a Republican lawyer in North Alabama of a business conflict of interest, Mr. Miller said the judges appointed for life to the appeals court will not be partisan when ruling in the case.
"I believe in the system, " he said.
When asked about the state of justice in America with a White House willing to trample on the rights and freedoms of Americans and fight corrupt wars in the Middle East without just provocation, he held out hope.
"There's a new day dawning," he said.
He pointed to the Democratic Party victory taking back control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 election, and the polls showing the Democrats winning in head to head fights with Republicans in the presidential election to take place in November, 2008.
"We'll get the White House back," he said. "With two branches of government, we can force justice."
Siegelman, Scrushy Show Trial Winds Down in Montgomery
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 26 - President George W. Bush likes to talk in black and white terms about evil. Let's talk about evil.
As former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy go before a federal judge to be sentenced this week in Montgomery, the eyes of the nation are once again focused on Alabama. What will they see?
If it were totally up to the Bush Justice Department, what they would see is another corrupt governor and businessman who deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
The problem is that people across this country will also be treated to the final bit of circus in a show trial put on by prosecutors and a judge who were appointed to office by a corrupt president. They were not elected by the people, and their own qualifications are suspect. Yet they will stop at nothing to gain and hold power, even if that means wasting millions upon millions of dollars in taxpayer money to trump up bogus charges and keep the political opposition down.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Don Siegelman: Guilty?
Don Siegelman was not the best governor Alabama ever had. I had hope for him when he was inaugurated in January, 1999. But looking back on it now, it is obvious that a corrupt political opposition was as much to blame for his failure as his own lack of sales ability.
The best hope for Siegelman to do great things for my home state was vested in a state lottery to help fund education and "hope" scholarships for every student who wanted to go to college. The reason it failed, we now know, was because of a plot by evil men.
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and disgraced former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed were cooking up deals with one Indian Tribe in Mississippi to screw another Indian Tribe in Alabama, and to screw the people of this state out of a chance to gamble at a casino and buy a lottery ticket. Of course the churches went along with it, because the faithful believe gambling takes money from their collection plates.
Our current governor, the biggest media darling to ever hold the office, was involved with those evil men. Yet he escapes any local press scrutiny for those ties, ties that bind him to a conspiracy that goes to the highest levels of our national government.
Even if skeptics want to dismiss the damning affidavit written by Republican lawyer Jill Simpson, which details a plot inside the White House and the governor's office to get rid of Siegelman in the legal arena, not the political arena, the lobbying scandal should not be ignored. But it has been ignored by the mainstream, corporate news operations in this state.
As for Richard Scrushy, as he tearfully said again in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery this morning, he refused to lie about Don Siegelman to obtain a light sentence for himself. So these overzealous, political prosecutors threw him in with Siegelman on trumped-up charges of trading a seat on a hospital board, a board he had already served on, allegedly in exchange for money to retire the debt on the lottery campaign fund.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Richard Scrushy: Guilty?
If the feds wanted to get Scrushy for something, they should have been able to convict him in Birmingham for knowledge of cooking the books in the HealthSouth scandal. But they did not get him in that case. An argument could be made that the reason they didn't was because of Bush's appointment of loyal Republicans with letters from the right preachers to the U.S. attorneys office - instead of hiring the most fit lawyers for the job.
For all the people in Mountain Brook who hate Richard Scrushy because they lost money on HealthSouth stock, perhaps you should begin to realize now that politicizing the justice system has tangible drawbacks.
I have covered many a corrupt politician in my time, including George C. Wallace, Guy Hunt and George W. Bush. But this case against Siegelman and Scrushy takes the cake.
It will be interesting to look into U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller's eyes as he delivers the sentence. His days under the scrutiny of journalists will not be over when he delivers that sentence. There are things in his own background that deserve more scrutiny.
Will he throw the book at them? Or will some of those letters he has been reading tug on his heart strings and find some place in there for mercy?
Will he let them stay out of prison while the case is appealed? That might be a good idea, since the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has some interesting things to consider in this case. There is little doubt now that Karl Rove, Bill Canary and the federal prosecutors conspired to get rid of Siegelman politically in the legal arena. Chances are, they could not have beaten him in the political arena, at least not without cheating a bit here and there in places like Bay Minette.
Old Tom Delay out in Texas, the former Senate Majority Leader, made a similar argument in his case. He has said the Democrats were prosecuting him to get him out of Congress. Maybe it's true, I don't know, although I have less sympathy for Delay because of some of the evil he has wrought on this country.
So sit back and watch the show in Montgomery on TV. We'll be here talking about it when it's over...
A reporter from the Huntsville Times caught up with White House political strategist Karl Rove last Thursday while President Bush was in Alabama for a photo op at a problematic nuclear power plant. The reporter asked Rove about the allegations made by a Republican lawyer Jill Simpon in an affidavit reported on at length below.
Rove's response (with a smile, according to the TPM Muckraker) to "such an explosive accusation?"
"I know nothing about any phone call," Rove said. At which point a White House press aide stepped up and said, "What he meant to say was that he has no comment."
If you are keeping up with the story on the Siegelman-Scrushy sentencing scheduled for this week, you may as well read Dana Beyerle's story from the Sunday Florence Times-Daily.
Attorney Scott Horton has written a scathing column about the Bush Justice Department, the Siegelman case and Jill Simpson's affidavit at the Harper's magazine Website, under the blog entitled No Comment. Turns out he spent some time in Alabama and visited Monroeville with his grandfather, and admires Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, especially Atticus Finch.
Excerpts:
Atticus Finch is the best-named character in the whole of American literature. His character is defined by a love of justice.
***
...troubling still is the conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in a prosecution in Montgomery....
***
My conclusion: I have no idea whether in the end of the day, Mr. Siegelman is guilty or innocent of corruption. But that the prosecution was corruptly conceived and pursued and that the court proceedings were corrupted, almost from the outset: that is already extremely clear. This is not a prosecution of a political figure for corruption. It is a political vendetta, conceived, developed and pursued for a corrupt purpose.
***
The Siegelman prosecution was commenced as the result of a plan hatched between senior figures in the Alabama Republican Party and Karl Rove.
***
The response to Simpson’s affidavit has been a series of brusque dismissive statements - all of them unsworn - from others who figured in the discussion and the federal prosecutor in the Siegelman case, who has now made a series of demonstrably false statements concerning the matter.
***
...those who have dismissed Simpson are in for a very rude surprise. Her affidavit stands up on every point, and there is substantial evidence which will corroborate its details.
***
...these facts make abundantly apparent that in the mind of the federal prosecutors there is one standard to be applied for a Democrat, and an entirely different standard for a Republican. That’s corrupt.
***
The Siegelman prosecution will in all likelihood soon be exposed for what it is: one of the blackest moments in Alabama justice since the trial of the Scottsboro Boys.
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller cleared the way Friday for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to be sentenced Tuesday by turning down remaining motions asking for a new trial based on claims that jurors discussed the case through e-mails during last year's two-month trial.
It has come to my attention that assistant U.S. attorney Steve Feaga, who is the one who recommended 30 years in prison for Siegelman, was also on the Jimmy Evans Attorney General team, a Democratic team, which recommended no jail time for Guy Hunt in 1993. Let's see.
What are the diferences in the two cases?
Hunt was a Republican who profited personally from his position. He was convicted of stealing $200,000 in inaugural money and spending it on home improvements and expensive suits.
Siegelman's sin was being a Democrat, who received no personal gain from the federal case made in Montgomery, which is not even a crime under state law. It's an example of the Feds misusing the RICO statutes passed to catch the Mafia.
Feaga has so far failed to return a phone call seeking comment on this issue. And the right-wing bloggers doubt this is a political prosecution?
Can you say, "Head in the sand?"
Here's a good test of objectivity. How would you like it if the shoe were on the other foot? That is, if it was a bunch of Democrats going after a Republican governor in federal court, would you still support the sentence?
Appeals Court Refuses to Remove Judge from Siegelman, Scrushy Sentencing
A federal appeals court has refused to order U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller to step down from presiding over the sentencing hearing for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, according to the AP.
The ruling was issued less than a week before Fuller is scheduled to sentence Siegelman and Scrushy at a hearing next Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Montgomery. Scrushy's attorneys argued that Fuller has a conflict because he owns stock in a south Alabama company that has a contract with the FBI, and more, as explained in the series below....
RAINSVILLE, Ala., June 17 - Dana Jill Simpson is faxing documents on a Sunday and waiting for me - to my surprise - with the front door unlocked in her modest red brick law office. It's at the halfway point between Ft. Payne and Scottsboro along Highway 35, which also happens to double as Main Street in the small town of Rainsville, Alabama, in this rural, mountainous Northeast corner of the state near the borders of Georgia and Tennessee.
Her house has already been burned down and one of her vehicles has been run off the road and totaled since she decided to seek justice and come out against the Bush and Riley political machines in the case of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy. While there may be no proof of a connection and there may be no connection at all, knowing the history of how hard the Bush's are willing to play in their pursuit of power, it has to make a person just a tad concerned - under the circumstances.
[A slight clarification here: Ms. Simpson had been communicating with a number of people about her research, including Scrushy and Siegelman lawyers, although she had not yet written the affidavit. Some blogs have reported that these events occured since the affidavit was signed in May. Not true. But she had already made the decision to seek justice. As you can read below, it took her awhile to come to that decision.]
Yet she still practices law with the front door unlocked in this land famous heretofore most notably for the Scottsboro Boys trial, one of the first glaring cases of legal racism that helped spawn the Civil Rights Movement.
The area is also politically famous for Buck's Pocket. It used to be said that defeated politicians went there to lick their wounds. And, the area is famous for its Sand Mountain tomatoes, the best in the world due to the high lime content in the limestone soil. And from Ft. Payne to the east, there is the country band Alabama.
Then, the area is somewhat famous for a series of strange UFO sightings down the road in Fyffe in the late 1980s, which is about the time I met Jill Simpson for the first time and came to believe in her veracity. She figured out that the UFO sightings were really military exercises.
What the mostly politically conservative people of this rural area may not fully understand yet, including the mostly retired Republicans who meet for coffee every Monday morning at the Hardees in Scottsboro, is that the place is about to be famous for something else.
Namely, unless the Bush Justice Department's power and corruption is so complete that they are able to bury this story and run roughshod over the blind Lady of Justice, the area is about to be famous for one modern-day Joan of Arc - a rare true believer in truth, justice and the "American way."
Most people who know her as a real, working lawyer just call her Jill Simpson.
Most people who keep up with the news about this already know that on May 21 of this year, Ms. Simpson wrote an affidavit and signed it in Georgia accusing the Bush and Riley political machines of all kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors. They include a plot to steal and fix the 2002 gubernatorial election for Bob Riley. And they involve a plot to politicize justice in the Siegelman, Scrushy bribery trial in Montgomery.
But since the New York Times and Time magazine came out with only partial stories about the affidavit, Ms. Simpson has been attacked in the local news media. She has been called a "drunk fiction writer" by former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts in an AP story. As it turns out, Butts was in on the Republican effort to defeat Don Siegelman in 2002, but somehow ended up representing Richard Scrushy in the Montgomery case against them both.
Ms. Simpson has also been called "intellectually dishonest" and a "disgruntled" bidder by U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin in a case involving a tire recycling contract - even though it's not true. She is not a bidder but was only a lawyer representing a client, which Franklin should know. And she's not disgruntled at all.
The tire contract Franklin speaks of went to a person who was found to be illegally dumping tires in Alabama from Georgia, instead of her client who wanted to properly recycle the tires, not dump them in a hole. And she's the one who saved Riley from a campaign appearance on top of a pile of tires set up by a group of Democrats who at that time controlled the Alabama Department of Environmental Management Board. In other words, she saved Riley from a Democrat dirty trick - and he knows it.
When Ms. Simpson called Mr. Franklin to ask him to investigate and correct the public record, he hung up the phone on her. When given an opportunity to comment for this story, Franklin called me "a nut" and hung up on me.
Franklin is the lead prosecutor in the failed case against Scrushy in Birmingham and in the Montgomery case against them both, where a potentially tainted jury found them guilty. Legal experts say Franklin may have violated judicial cannons of ethics himself by making the statements in the pre-sentencing phase of the case, and for making false accusations about another attorney.
Siegelman and Scrushy are scheduled to be sentenced in that case on June 26 for allegedly being involved in a bribery scheme to give Scrushy a seat on a state hospital board, ostensibly in exchange for a $500,000 contribution to retire the debt on Siegelman's failed attempt at creating a state lottery to fund education.
One of the most important parts of Ms. Simpson's story involves U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, who presided over the Siegelman-Scrushy trial and has so far refused to recuse himself from the sentencing phase of the case, in spite of facts unearthed by Ms. Simpson. Those facts show he has a conflict of interest and should never have sat in judgment in the case.
But that is getting ahead of the story. In trying to figure out a way to tell this story in its entirety, I am reminded of the Showtime pitch for "The Tudor's" series about the Monarchy of the young Henry VIII: "To understand a story, you must go back to the beginning. You only know how it ends."
You may know how it ends on June 26 - unless the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta intervenes and sentencing is delayed pending an investigation.
How did it all begin? How did Jill Simpson become involved in Republican politics in Alabama and end up being a pawn in a Karl Rove dirty trick that resulted in the unlikely election of Bob Riley as governor of Alabama in 2002?
And why did this otherwise loyal Republican political volunteer decide to come out against the Bush and Riley political machines in the form of an affidavit that lifts the veil on how justice is arrived at in America?
Back to the Beginning: Jill Simpson's Legal and Political History
Jill Simpson grew up in the Rainsville area of Northeast Alabama as the daughter of two parents who were both politically active - on opposite sides of the political fence.
She was raised by a Republican mother, whose family was mostly made up of potato farmers, and a Democrat father, who knew George C. Wallace so well that the four-term governor was able to help her gain admittance to the University of Alabama Law School even though she was initially turned down.
She had been accepted at Cumberland Law School in Birmingham and Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, Tennessee - a far more prestigious school. But she really wanted to go to Alabama, where as an undergraduate student in the 1980s she met and became close friends with Rob Riley, the politically ambitious son of Bob Riley.
That's the same Bob Riley who was a three-term Congressman from Alabama who would be elected governor in a razor-close race in 2002 - in part thanks to her.
While an undergrad at Alabama, Ms. Simpson was an active pro-life advocate who joined the university's Young Republicans, a group that actively supported the reelection of Ronald Reagan in 1984. She remembers going to see Ronald Reagan speak there in 1985, and still admires the former president.
When I met her on the Southside of Birmingham in 1989, she was just out of law school and beginning to set up a practice "in the big city." But after a year and a half in Birmingham, she discovered she could get more work as a lawyer handling divorces, bankruptcies and Social Security cases in the region she called home. So she moved back to Dekalb County and set up a lucrative law practice in the place her daddy had practiced accounting all his life.
Over the years of working out of Rainsville, she also developed an interesting legal specialty representing "storm gypsies," a shorthand term for rednecks with trucks and tools who go in and clean up the landscape in the aftermath of ice-storms, tornadoes and hurricanes.
And it is that legal work that gave her the expertise to do what Siegelman's and Scrushy's teams of lawyers and $30 million could not do in Montgomery: Oust a federal judge for an ethical and legal conflict that may get him removed from the case by the appeals court - if he does not recuse himself before the June 26 sentencing date.
But again, that is getting ahead of the story.
Back in 2001, while doing federal contract work for her storm gypsy clients in Washington, D.C. and hounding the Federal Emergency Management agency, Ms. Simpson would often run into her old friend Rob Riley at the classy watering holes of D.C.
When Rob Riley told her his dad had decided to run for governor, she agreed to help.
At that time, she says, the Rileys had virtually no money to run a campaign for governor. So she put together a volunteer operation in North Alabama that could "knock up signs" and such for virtually nothing.
Lt. Gov. Steve Windom of Mobile was the clear Republican favorite, with all the support of the Bushes, Karl Rove, Bill Canary and the rest of the machinery of the Republican National Committee and the Alabama Republican Party. But Windom was already in a major mudslinging dogfight with then-governor Siegelman.
So according to Ms. Simpson, the Riley campaign was able to take the high road in the primary campaign "and float above all that muck."
She figured out that Riley only needed to take 13 North Alabama counties to win the primary. And the strategy worked. Riley won.
"We beat Karl Rove and Bill Canary in the primary, with almost no money," she says with a touch of glee in her voice.
Along the way, in their effort to raise money, Ms. Simpson tried to get the Rileys to help her collect on a contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for one of her storm gypsy clients. It was a $4 million deal for cleaning up after an ice storm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a contract that was tied up in the federal bureaucracy in Washington. What's a Congressman for but to help a citizen collect legally earned money being held up in Washington? She promised to split the money with the Rileys if they would help free it up in the bureaucracy.
But the contract was never paid. Why? Because once President George W. Bush heard about Riley's situation, she says, he agreed to make a fund raising visit to Alabama. That visit raised roughly $4 million for the Riley for governor campaign and gave Rob Riley the budget he needed to run a real campaign for his dad.
Once the primary was over and the Rileys had the money raised by Bush and the RNC, they didn't have as much of a need for Ms. Simpson's volunteer network. So she didn't hear back from them much during the general election campaign - until about a week before the election, and significantly during the recount that ensued.
In late October and early November of 2002, the Rileys started calling Ms. Simpson back to get her help in the event of a close election, her phone records confirm. And on election-day Nov. 5, the race was razor-close.
When the poll workers and the press left the courthouses of Alabama that Tuesday night, Siegelman was declared the winner statewide. But the race was not to be over and would come down to a few thousand questionable votes in Baldwin County in South Alabama.
Siegelman received 19,070 votes in Baldwin County and beat Riley by 3,139 votes there. And he won statewide by an initial count showing him with 674,052 to Rileys 670,913 - a margin of 3,139 votes, the closest ever reported in an Alabama election.
But sometime during the night after everyone else went home, a Riley campaign worker by the name of Dan Gans - who had served as Riley’s chief of staff both in Montgomery and Washington and went on to work with the Alexander Strategy Group, which has been repeatedly implicated in the Abramoff corrupt lobbying scandal - set up a laptop computer in the Baldwin County courthouse and changed the results, sources say. (Other sources say it was not Dan Gans, but another Riley aide. A Congressional investigation could get to the bottom of this).
In other words, he committed "electronic ballot stuffing" by changing the vote totals digitally, subtracting 6,334 votes from the Siegelman column.
Gans bills himself as a Republican “voting technology expert" and brags on a now defunct Website about his role in implementing "a state of the art ballot security system that was critical to securing Governor-elect Rileys narrow margin of victory (3,120 votes)."
According to Auburn University Professor James H. Gundlach, who studied the election and reported his results in a peer reviewed paper presented to the Alabama Political Science Association, there is little doubt that election fraud took place that night in Bay Minette.
For one thing, none of the vote counts for any other candidate changed in that last count, only Siegelman's. And all the votes changed in a negative direction.
"When Baldwin County reported two sets of results, it was clear to me that someone had manipulated the results," Gundlach says. "There is simply no way that electronic vote counting can produce two sets of results without someone using computer programs in ways that were not intended."
All you have to do to steal an election that is so close, he concluded, would be to install a special card on the tabulating computer, along with enabling software, and use a similarly equipped laptop in a nearby room to modify the data files immediately after they were read from the cartridges.
"This would simply require access to the tabulating computer at some time before the election to install the card and after the election to remove the card," he said.
A source who was in the courthouse on election night says Gans was present and had the necessary access and was very interested in the final results. And this high level official in Baldwin County politics was surprised himself when he woke up the next morning and found out the numbers had changed overnight.
Working for the New York Times out of Bay Minette myself following the election and recount, I interviewed Probate Judge Adrian Johns at the time. Looking back at my files, I reported that he said, "a programming glitch in the software" showed Siegelman with 19,070 votes, enough to give Siegelman the victory in the early, "unofficial" count.
But Johns said the mistake was "corrected later" and that the call-in sheets from poll workers matched the 12,736 number that was made official Wednesday morning.
I suspected fraud and was prepared to work my sources at that time and investigate. But since Siegelman basically conceded, I was pulled out of Bay Minette by the Times and sent back home to New Orleans.
So why did Siegelman concede the election completely after only a few days and not push for a full recount as allowed by law?
Siegelman said in a recent interview that he conceded because his team figured the Alabama Supreme Court was stacked with a Republican majority and would side with Riley, so there was little point in insisting on a recount.
The case proceeded much like Bush vs. Gore in 2000, when the majority Republican appointed U.S. Supreme Court handed the election to Bush over then Vice President Al Gore. In Alabama, Republican Attorney General Bill Pryor certified the changed election count and the courts upheld it.
But Ms. Simpson tells a more intriguing story about that week. Her phone records show she was in almost constant contact with Rob Riley and others in the campaign.
The Riley campaign, led by a Republican operative named Bill Canary, now head of the Business Council of Alabama and husband to Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney who brought the case against Scrushy and Siegelman, asked Ms. Simpson to go to the Jackson County Courthouse and take some pictures. But not just any pictures. It seemed a local Democrat would be seen there putting up Riley for Governor signs at a Ku Klux Klan rally - to use as a dirty trick against Riley.
What he did not know was that the Rileys already knew about the plan and had their own plan - to expose the Democrat dirty trick attempt and use it against the Democrats.
Ms. Simpson to this day does not know how the Riley campaign knew a Democrat would be engaged in that dubious activity. But she is convinced it was part of a Karl Rove double-barreled dirty trick to get Siegelman to concede – if the electronic voting manipulation strategy failed for some reason.
(I've been reporting since the Bush AWOL story that Bush and Rove learned their politics of dirty tricks in Alabama in 1972. This proves it has gotten totally out of hand).
So she went to the courthouse, parked a few blocks away so her car wouldn't be photographed at the scene, and she even wore a disguise to keep the local press from recognizing her. Sure enough, the Democrat was knocking up Riley signs and whooping it up with the local Klan, pretending to work for Bob Riley.
She took the photos and later hand-delivered the film in a disposable camera to a campaign worker sent to pick it up by Rob Riley. She was told they were given to Terry Butts, who was supposed to show them to Siegelman and force him to concede the election.
Siegelman said that would not have happened, because it would have been an ethical conflict. He says he believes everything in Jill Simpson's affidavit, but the most important thing, he said, was that "she places Karl Rove at the scene of the crime."
Terry Butts denies all this, of course, and says even though he was tired from pulling "all nighters" writing briefs and dealing with the recount issue, he has no recollection of any conference call. Butts recalls Bob Riley putting his arm around him when the call came in that Siegelman conceded and using the term, "the winning team." But he claims no recollection of any Klan photos.
The potential ethical quandary must not have dawned on Butts in his exhaustion, because the prospect didn't prevent him from bragging about it in the conference call, Ms. Simpson says, most likely in the presence of the governor on a speaker phone. In the conference call Ms. Simpson reports in her affidavit, Butts continually said things like he was a Democrat before he became a Republican and that he knew Don Siegelman and could get to him and assure Siegelman that "it will all be over" if he would just concede.
Nothing else was ever done with the photos, apparently, and no one admits saving copies. The local newspaper in Scottsboro did get photos of the Riley signs at the Klan rally, but apparently never figured out, at least for publication, who was putting the signs up - or why.
And, as the story goes, those photos might be useful in the future to taint other Democrats, including Siegelman – when the time came for Rob to run himself. According to Ms. Simpson, the initial Riley election plan called for Bob Riley to serve one term as governor and then for Rob to run and serve two terms.
But it didn't work out that way, since apparently, "Bob liked the job too much."
After the 2002 election, Ms. Simpson continued to stay in touch with Rob Riley and others in the Republican Party as Bob Riley moved into the governor's mansion in Montgomery and took over the reins of government. Her law practice flourished and life was pretty good in North Alabama, until the 2006 governor's race started heating up in 2005.
During that campaign, in part since the Rileys had not helped her with her federal contract case and others, in other words they didn't do their jobs, Ms. Simpson decided to publicly support Judge Roy Moore in the primary – even though she insists she intended to vote for Riley all along in the general election.
But her network of volunteers knocked up signs for the Ten Commandments Judge. And they were an ambitious group, Ms. Simpson says.
Just before a scheduled trip to the area by Riley, the volunteers plastered her office with Judge Roy Moore for governor signs. And the Riley campaign hit the roof.
"There were some hurt feelings," Ms. Simpson admits.
Once Judge Moore lost the Republican primary race to Riley, the Riley campaign started calling upon her again – this time asking Ms. Simpson for something she could not and would not deliver.
She was asked to investigate state Senator Lowell Barron, a powerful Democrat in the state legislature from Jackson County, who she had known all her life and respected. It was rumored that Barron was having an extramarital affair with another man's wife, a man who died in a fall from a mountaintop in the area. There were further rumors that Barron and a certain "yardman" were present at the accident, suicide – or murder – and that Barron may have pushed the man off the cliff.
Ms. Simpson says she knew the rumors were not true and that what they asked her to do was not only unethical, but illegal, in her view, so she absolutely refused to go along. The Riley campaign had also asked her to participate in some meetings to try and exclude four state senators from being able to run in the fall election because of problems with financial disclosure forms. She also refused to get involved in that controversy.
"I told them hell no," Ms. Simpson said. "So they stopped calling me after that."
All along, the Bush Justice Department kept up the pressure on Siegelman, trying to get him out of the way in any future election.
Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Birmingham who represented Siegelman early on in the case, met with federal prosecutors in Montgomery in the summer of 2004 and felt Siegelman's chances of getting off were good.
"Frankly, we got the strong impression that they didn’t have a case," Jones told a reporter for the Anniston Star.
But by that fall, Jones said, the Montgomery prosecutors stopped returning his calls, but finally told him "they went up to D.C., and the headquarters people told them to go back and look at the whole case again, from start to finish. Normally, that’s not that unusual. But in light of all that is going on right now (in Washington with the politicization of the Department of Justice), well, it takes on a whole new meaning.”
So U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, a Bush appointee, went ahead and indicted Siegelman on May 27, 2004 on federal charges of participating in a bid-rigging scheme with his former chief of staff and a major contributor to his political campaigns.
After a major fight with federal prosecutors and switching judges three times, the trial started in October 2004. The next day, however, in part due to the oversight of what constitutes "intent" to commit a crime on the part of U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon, charges against all three were thrown out "with prejudice," meaning that charges could not be re-filed ever again based on the same charges and the same disallowed evidence.
But that was not to deter the Bush Justice Department or the Riley machine.
On October 26, 2005, Siegelman was indicted again on charges of racketeering, bribery, and extortion, along with his former chief of staff, a former state transportation director and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy.
Ms. Simpson says she followed the case with much interest, especially in light of what came out in her affidavit about the Bush Justice Department "conspiracy" to "get" Don Siegelman by Canary's "girls."
Among Ms. Simpson's hobbies, she likes to collect all manner of political memorabilia. She proudly shows me a signed, color photograph of Karl Rove, for example. She gets kicks spending a lot of her time signed onto the Internet using the Web to "do" legal research.
After Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted, she remembered something Rob Riley had told her in a meeting in Birmingham in 2005. Riley had indicated after the first trial against Siegelman was lost that they had "found another judge" in Montgomery who might very well be able to put through a successful conviction.
Because of Rob Riley's braggadocio, Ms. Simpson said, she began checking out the judge, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller. What she found was so astonishing to her that she eventually felt compelled to call one of Siegelman's lawyers to report it. But that first phone call was never returned.
That could have been the end of it, and she said to herself: "Oh, well. I tried."
But eventually she put together such a revealing picture of a very rich federal judge who owned companies doing millions upon millions of dollars worth of business with the U.S. government, including making uniforms for the FBI and training Saudi and Iranian pilots - all while doing business with the Justice Department in eliminating Siegelman from politics forever.
What Scrushy didn't know and was later distressed to learn is that he was not even close to being the richest man in that courtroom. It was the judge.
Back during the heady days of 2002, Ms. Simpson had followed Don Siegelman around looking for dirt for the Rileys. Their nickname for Siegelman had been "The Cockroach." As the story goes, "he was like a cockroach. You couldn't kill him" or "get him to go away."
Now she found herself tracking the judge who was going to put him away perhaps for life.
Amazingly, Justice Fuller received a $178 million contract through a privately held company to train pilots and navigators for the U.S. government DURING THE SIEGELMAN, SCRUSY TRIAL. The company is called Doss Aviation of Alabama.
For another company called Aureus International that is listed as a division of Doss Aviation on the company's Website, Fuller is also listed as the majority owner, according to Ms. Simpson's research. The company does a comparable amount of business making uniforms for the U.S. military and the FBI, which played a major role in the investigation and prosecution of Siegelman and Scrushy.
Two FBI agents were granted special permission by Fuller to sit at the prosecution table every day during the trial - not only to aid in the prosecution, but to put on a show for the jury.
Yet legal cannons and codes of conduct say it is a "duty" on the part of any judge to disclose any potential conflict of interest before trying a case, and to disclose all of his sources of income fully in official financial disclosure reports.
U.S. District Judge Karen Bowdre called a conference with the attorneys before the Scrushy trial in Birmingham, for example, and revealed that she had ridden horses at the same stable as Scrushy's wife and had met her. Neither the defense nor the prosecution balked at that and she presided over the trial anyway. That trial resulted in a not guilty verdict for Scrushy.
But in Fuller's case, no pre-trial conference was called. And Fuller lists no income from Aureus on any of his disclosure forms to date. He is about one month late in filing his forms for last year, according to the online disclosure reports, and legal experts say he may be preparing to cover his tracks in a future filing.
In addition, the controlling laws in the case say if a "reasonable person" were to conclude that the judge has a conflict or the appearance of a conflict, the judge should recuse himself. It doesn't say what a judge would conclude, but what a lay person would conclude. That is what the 11th circuit court panel will have to consider - if not prior to sentencing, then on appeal.
"...a judge ... should not serve as an officer, director, active partner, manager, advisor, or employee of any business other than a business closely held and controlled by members of the judge's family."
All of this is laid out in a petition filed with the appeals court by Scrushy's legal team. You can read the document here.
As for why Fuller might have risked his own legal and political future to help convict Siegelman, the only answer can be a certain arrogance of power, perhaps because Fuller's own background reveals interesting ties from his college days to Rob Riley, and from their ties as being campaign managers in Washington when Riley ran his dad's Congressional campaigns and Fuller ran Terry Everett's. The record also shows he has major ties to the military-industrial complex operating largely out of Enterprise Alabama, home to Rep. Terry Everett, who basically acts as Fuller's paid lobbyist in Washington to obtain federal contracts for his defense-related companies. His companies not only clothe and equip the troops. They wash their vehicles and pump their gas too.
A search of Everett's campaign finance disclosure forms shows Fuller has contributed thousands of dollars personally to Everett's campaigns. Fuller's office did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Now that all kinds of accusations of scandal have surfaced in the national press about the political manipulation of the U.S. justice system by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the firing of eight federal prosecutors, the judiciary committees in the U.S. House and Senate, led by the new Democratic Party majority, are investigating and holding hearings.
And there is an indication that Ms. Simpson may be called to testify before it is all over. She has already obtained special legal counsel in preparation for expected appearances, and sources in Washington say those committees are considering calling her.
How and Why Ms. Simpson Wrote and Signed the Affidavit
To understand why this otherwise loyal Republican would come out against her fellow party members in such an explosive way, you have to understand the mind of a true believer.
When no one on the Siegelman legal team called Ms. Simpson back, she felt ethically off the hook, but not for long. She had tried and they had failed. But it continued to weigh on her conscience.
Back when the Riley campaign had asked her to do the "dirty, untrue" research, Ms. Simpson had contacted the Alabama Bar Association to get an opinion on her legal and ethical responsibilities. She was advised that she had no legal or ethical duty as a lawyer regarding these political shenanigans.
She was told she could contact Joe Espy, who represented Barron, but also knew Don Siegelman. Espy asked her to write down what happened, but she didn't. She told Espy what she knew, hoping that would be the end of her role in the case.
Later on, Espy asked her why the Riley campaign would ask her to do some of the things they had asked her to do. Then she told him about the photos and the conspiracy to get Siegelman to concede in 2002. So Espy told her to call the bar association again, and she was told she could contact Scrushy and had a "moral duty to do the right thing."
So she called and then later wrote several letters to Art Leach, who was representing Scrushy.
Meanwhile, she had already told her story to her friend Mark Bollinger, who was on Alabama Attorney General Jimmy Evan's task force in the successful prosecution of Guy Hunt in 1993. Bollinger also knew Siegelman, so he eventually told Siegelman Ms. Simpson's story. Siegelman called and asked Ms. Simpson to write up an affidavit, but still she refused.
Then as sentencing was approaching and justice didn't seem to be happening in Montgomery, Ms. Simpson finally came up with the idea to drive across state lines to Georgia and sign the affidavit in a lawyer's office in Dade County. She then met Mark Bollinger there and gave him a copy of the now famous affidavit. Why go to Georgia? Because she was afraid federal prosecutors or even Alabama's conservative Attorney General Troy King might drag her into court and tie her up with expensive paperwork for years for something like mail or wire fraud - for making accusations against a federal judge in an Alabama court filing sent through the mail, or even e-mail.
But so far, the judge has ignored the facts in a brief filed with the 11th circuit court based on her research and refused to step aside. Her name is not on the brief. And she insists she took no fee for her work and time.
Ms. Simpson insists she had no desire for publicity and the only thing she's getting out of whole thing is "a bunch of misery." To back it up, she almost canceled talking to me two days before the interview. She would not allow any photos to be taken of her for this story. And she's refused at least one offer to appear on a national network television show to talk about her affidavit.
But as the sentencing date approaches in less than a week, she thinks that without telling someone in the press the whole story - and getting it all out in a timely manner so people will understand it - justice may not prevail.
In addition, she is not happy with the way assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin has falsely attacked her in the local press. She believes the false allegations are a possible violation of federal guidelines governing what prosecutors can say to the press during the phase of a case between conviction and sentencing. And, one lawyer can't say that about another lawyer without potentially facing legal consequences.
So she agreed to tell her story to me. After eight hours of talking with Ms. Simpson, she said something that should let you know where she stands - and it has nothing to do with partisan politics or money.
"I still believe that justice will always prevail in the end," Ms. Simpson said. "Whether it prevails in time for Mr. Siegelman and Mr. Scrushy to avoid going to jail, we will see. But in the end, justice will always prevail. I really believe that."
AP Correction in Siegelman Trial Story: Bollinger No FBI Agent
The Associated Press had to run a correction on two of its stories involving the Siegelman, Scrushy trial story of late, actually in the Jill Simpson affidavit story as we have been calling it - since that's what it is.
In June 2 and June 9 stories about an affidavit alleging possible political links to the federal investigation of former Gov. Don Siegelman, The Associated Press erroneously identified Mark Bollinger as having been in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation. Bollinger was an aide to former Attorney General Jimmy Evans but did not work in the ABI.
Actually, he was on the task force who got Republican Gov. and former chicken farmer and Amway salesman Guy Hunt convicted and removed from office for illegally using state inaugural money to install a marble bathtub in his double-wide house trailer in Cullman.
We should report that the long version of our story is up to about 5,400 words as of tonight. We have a bit of checking to do in the morning, but could have something up by sometime Wednesday. Check back often...
The Birmingham News ran an editorial in today's paper urging U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller to throw the book at former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
Perhaps the Birmingham News should have sent the reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for an ad hoc little series investigating Democrats in the Alabama Legislature who also teach in the Community College system to investigate the judge and the prosecutor in the Siegelman-Scrushy case.
They will have egg on their faces when we publish our investigation over the next few days. Bur for now, here's part of what this corporate, chain newspaper had to say about the case under the headline: Crimes and punishment.
Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy say their families would be devastated by the long prison terms prosecutors are recommending for them....
But in handing down sentences on June 26, U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller can't rule based only on how it will affect Siegelman's and Scrushy's families.... The federal sentencing structure goes beyond trying to measure the realm of physical danger. It acknowledges, for instance, the damage done by those who abuse the public trust.
Grave harm is inflicted on society when people entrusted with power use it not for the public's good but for their own good or the good of their benefactors. In the case of Siegelman and Scrushy, jurors concluded that Siegelman traded a seat on a powerful board that controls expansion of hospitals and health care services, all for a $500,000 donation to his lottery campaign. The federal jury concluded Siegelman was selling that board position, and Scrushy was buying.
That's a serious crime, and as The News consistently argues, it's a crime that deserves serious punishment.
This from the same newspaper that barely acknowledges its own racist past, that botched the investigation of Bill Baxley in 1986 and handed the election to one redneck idiot named Guy Hunt. The paper ran every press release Richard Scrushy and HealthSouth sent them for 20 years without ever conducting its own investigation of HealthSouth, until that day when Mr. Scrushy decided to cash in his expiring stock options and sell. A lot of people in Mountain Brook lost money on the stock, including the publisher of the Birmingham News and a lot of his friends, so The News turned rapid against Mr. Scrushy and they have been after him ever since, even when a jury aquitted him in Birmingham.
This is the same paper that refused to appologize for endorsing George W. Bush twice for president, even though the vast majority of Americans and Alabamians, Republican and Democrat, now realize reelecting him was a huge mistake.
Is it any wonder the paper is losing circulation and the community's respect?
Stay tuned for our series on the Jill Simpson affidavit story. It's a doozy.
It will take some time to put it all together and publish, but we expect to have the whole story out well before the June 26 sentencing date.
Here's a hint: It would be a travesty of justice for Siegelman and Scrushy to be sent to prison for the rest of their lives by a judge who is far richer than Scrushy and far more corrupt than either one of them. If Fuller doesn't recuse himself from sentencing, he is opening a can of worms that could well lead to the downfall of some of his closest benefactors, including Rep. Terry Everitt of Enterprise, Sen. Jeff Sessions and Sen. Richard Shelby, Gov. Bob Riley and his son Rob Riley, who still harbors major political ambitions.
It looks like the Democratic Party takeover of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections may finally start paying off for justice and democracy in America, although the White House is still fighting to keep its de facto Monarchy going by obstructing justice.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees threatened a constitutional showdown with the White House Wednesday if the Bush administration does not comply with subpoenas issued for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and political director Sara Taylor.
This marks the first time Congress has reached directly inside the White House in the probe of the political firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to the AP.
"The bread crumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. "This investigation will not end until the White House complies with the demands of this subpoena in a timely and reasonable manner so that we may get to the bottom of this."
"The White House cannot have it both ways - it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses while claiming nothing improper occurred," added Senate Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Complying with the subpoenas could set a precedent for testimony by another adviser, not yet on the subpoena list, but one who a lot of people want to talk to about political minipulation of the Justice Department. That would be, you guessed it, Bush's chief political strategist Karl Rove.
There's more smoke being reported by Scott Horton at the Harper's magazine blog "No Comment" today. He's definetely one to watch, and says in the U.S. Attorneys scandal: All Roads Lead to Karl Rove.
And, Alice Martin, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, is under investigation by the Justice Department for whether she committed perjury in a deposition related to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against Martin’s office, according to the Political Parlor blog.
We are not surprised by much these days, although we did not expect to see such a blatant bias on the part of the Alabama news media in its coverage of the Jill Simpson affidavit story as well as the coverage of the Siegelman, Scrushy trial. Siegelman and Scrushy are both portrayed as pathetic beggers today: Siegelman, Scrushy Ask Court for Leniency, while in fact, the evidence is mounting that U.S. Justice Mark Fuller has a clear conflict of interest and should never have sat in judgement of Siegelman and Scrushy at all. Where is the coverage of that issue by the corporate, chain newspapers in this state?
Now that we are finally digging into the documents of the 2002 and 2006 elections in Alabama, it is becoming obvious that election theft did take place in Bay Minette in 2002 and that it was directed by Karl Rove. We knew he was a political genius who has been called Bush's Brain. But we did not know the extent to which he was tuned in to the details of who controls every ballot box in the country.
The Bush crowd is no better than the scheming Monarchs in Europe under King Henry VIII portrayed in "The Tudors" on Showtime.
What we want to know is: When will the other heads roll in Washington?
Gonzales has to go. And someone needs to subpoena Karl Rove, before its too late...
Jill Simpson Affidavit Story About to Break Wide Open
We have confirmed on good authority now that a full-blown investigation is about to ensue in the Jill Simpson affidavit story. Former Gov. Don Siegelman is telling local reporters this, and there are several New York Times and LA Times reporters in the state working on the story.
Time magazine is also still interested in more on the story, as is Harper's magazine and potentially The Nation Institute.
A partial history of the Justice Department scandal in Alabama is circulating around by e-mail. In the interest of getting all the information out As Soon As Possible, we've decided to publish it in its entirety below.
Keep in mind we are still working to confirm this information and to investigate beyond this incomplete account. Check back often...
Will this story really be the "Watergate" of 2007-2008? Or is there a better analogy? Is the Simpson affidavit like the Pelican Brief in John Grisham's book by the same name? Somebody better protect Jill Simpson : )
Birmingham News Corrects Jill Simpson Affidavit Story
The Birmingham News ran a correction today in an effort to clear up a bit of misleading reporting in the Jill Simpson affidavit story. The story is related to the U.S. prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy and to the scandals surrounding the Bush administration's politization of the U.S. justice system. Chances are, you read it here first...
A headline Saturday on page 1D referred to two people who have given affidavits that could relate to the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman as "Siegelman advocates." Although the affidavits raise questions about the Siegelman case, Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer from Rainsville, said she hadn't met Siegelman, nor had she represented him. Mark Bollinger, a business associate's of Simpson's, also said he hadn't worked for Siegelman.
The truth will emerge in this case yet. Could it be that Gov. Bob Riley stole the 2002 election from Siegelman in Bay Minette afterall, with a little help from some pictures of a Democrat putting up Riley for Governor signs at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Jackson County?
There may not be a newspaper in Christendom that will be able to figure this one out, and surely no TV news outlet. Stay tuned. We're on it...
Bush Justice Department Scandal Update: Read Jill Simpson's Affidavit
Republicans in the U.S. Senate today managed to block a symbolic 'no-confidence' vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, rejecting a Democratic effort to force him from office amid blistering criticism from lawmakers in both parties, according to the Associated Press. The 53-38 vote to move the resolution to full debate fell seven short of the 60 required.
In bringing the matter up, Democrats dared Republicans to vote their true feelings about an attorney general who has alienated even the White House's strongest defenders by bungling the firings of federal prosecutors and claiming not to recall the details. He has angered the left and independents as well for writing the memo authorizing torture and for approving the massive domestic spying operation on American citizens by the NSA.
Republicans did not defend him on the Senate floor today, just voting against moving the resolution forward.
In an story that may very well become important in the investigations of scandal involving the Bush Justice Department, as it turns out I am an acquaintance of Jill Simpson from the Southside of Birmingham in the late 1980s. If you have not heard of her, take note. She is now famous, at least on the Internet, for writing the affidavit alleging a full-blown Karl Rove-led conspiracy to take down former Gov. Don Siegelman - all the way back to 2002.
She was a pawn in a Karl Rove dirty trick, to be exact, ala George Wallace. This could have long-term implications for the Siegelman-Scrushy Montgomery case - both sentencing and appeal - and for the futures of U.S. Justice Mark Fuller, Gov. Bob Riley and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts.
I talked to Ms. Simpson at length today and understand there may be some kind of correction in the offing by the Birmingham News.
There is more work to be done on a full-blown story on this tantalizing affair. So check back soon.
I will say this as a hint. I have no doubt Dana Jill Simpson is a true believer in using the law to help people and being ethical at all times, not exactly the normal practice of many lawyers in Alabama - or in New York. They are mostly in it for the money.
Hell, Rick Bragg told me one time he thought I was a "true believer." And he wasn't saying it as a compliment, necessarily.
There are cynics who will try to cast aspersions, but then at the end of the day, there are us true believers. If we all got together, who knows what might happen? You think we could solve the global warming problem? What about poverty?
So, we may as well get all the way into this story, since the Daily Kos today ran a blog blurb and mentioned Tommy Stevenson's column in the Tuscaloosa News.
And while your at it, you may as well read the Harper's magazine blog column dressing down the Birmingham News, in case you missed it on the news page:
The news on the political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman just gets more interesting as sentencing approaches.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman
The Alabama bureau of the Associated Press finally got around to obtaining the Jill Simpson affidavit, the one linking Bush political aide Karl Rove to the Siegelman prosecution, and moved a story on the wires about it at around 9 p.m. tonight.
In the story, Ms. Simpson is identified as "a Republican lawyer (from Rainsville) who supports Alabama's Ten Commandments judge" who said Wednesday she implicated White House aide Karl Rove in the federal prosecution of former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman "because she feared justice had not been served."
Ms. Simpson said in the affidavit that Republican operative Bill Canary told her and others in a telephone conference call in November 2002 that he had spoken with Rove, referred to in the sworn document as "Karl," and had been assured the Justice Department was pursuing Siegelman.
Rove has been implicated in the Bush Justice Department scandals involving the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by their Bush appointed boss, Alberto Gonzales, who is still under investigation by Congress and an independent Justice Department review panel.
Siegelman said he has been on the opposite side of Rove politically for more than a decade, "so it does not suprprise me at all that he has been placed at the scene of the crime plotting for my political destruction."
Simpson said in the affidavit that she was a campaign worker for Riley in northeast Alabama and that the conference call occurred on Nov. 18, 2002, amid concerns about the recount, a possible Democratic dirty trick in her area and Siegelman being a problem for Riley in the future, according to the AP. She gave the affidavit in front of a notary public on May 21, she said, because she was concerned the convictions of Siegelman and Scrushy "might have been a miscarriage of justice," although she has not filed the affidavit with any court.
"I believe honestly that every defendant, rich or poor, has a right to a fair trial," Simpson said. "That's why I did what I did."
She said she has been a Republican for years. Although she worked for Riley in 2002, last year she worked in the campaign of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, Alabama's Ten Commandments judge, who has been a critic of Riley and mounted an unsuccessful challenge against him last year in the Republican Primary.
Simpson claims in the affidavit that Riley's son, Rob Riley, asked about Siegelman being a problem in the future and was told by Canary "not to worry about Don Siegelman that 'his girls would take care of him.'" The affidavit says Canary identified "his girls" as his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the middle district of Alabama in Montgomery, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney in the northern district in Birmingham.
"Rob Riley then asked if he was sure 'these girls' could take care of Don Siegelman and William 'Bill' Canary told him not to worry that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman," the affidavit says.
All of this has was already reported June 1 by Time magazine, The New York Times - and the Locust Fork News and Journal.
Simpson told the AP she was certain "Karl" was a reference to Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's chief political strategist. She said Canary had mentioned him often.
Four key figures in the case continue to deny the charges made in Ms. Simpson's affidavit.
Louis Franklin, the chief prosecutor in the Siegelman and Scrushy case, still claims Karl Rove had no role whatsoever in bringing about the Siegelman investigation or prosecution. Canary told the AP Wednesday he had no memory of the phone conversation or of meeting Simpson. Rob Riley said he did not recall Canary ever making the statements attributed to him. Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Terry Butts is also named in the affidavit, but he too denies being a party to the conversation.
Simpson said Wednesday that she has phone records from the period Nov. 13 to Nov. 18 to help support her affidavit.
Mark Bollinger, a former aide to a Democratic attorney general and a friend of Simpson's, also has signed an affidavit stating that Simpson has told him of the phone call. He said he understands why Simpson waited to reveal details of the call.
"If she had said it in 2002, nobody would have believed her," Bollinger told the AP. He said that has changed with the prosecution of Siegelman in Birmingham and Montgomery and events in Washington, where the Bush administration has been shown to use politics rather than legal qualifications in appointments and firings at the U.S. Department of Justice.
At the time of the alleged call, Siegelman was seeking a recount in his 2002 re-election bid, which he narrowly lost to Republican Bob Riley. Last year Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy were convicted on federal bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges following an investigation that began in 2002. Siegelman also was convicted on a separate obstruction of justice charge, and both are scheduled to be sentenced later this month.
Times Finally Reports Bush Justice Department Bias in Alabama Cases
It is interesting that the New York Times has finally decided to report on the political bias of the Bush Justice Department now, on the verge of sentencing for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Richard Scrushy found guilty in Montgomery case
In a story printed today with a May 31 dateline, a Times correspondent reports that a "top Republican operative in Alabama boasted in 2002 that the United States attorneys in Alabama would 'take care' of Mr. Siegelman. The operative, William Canary, is married to the United States attorney in Montgomery, Leura G. Canary. Mr. Canary, who heads the Business Council of Alabama, was an informal adviser to Bob Riley, a Republican, who defeated Mr. Siegelman in 2002."
Also, the paper reports, "Mr. Canary worked in the White House under President Bush’s father and has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political strategist."
In an affidavit, attorney Jill Simpson said Mr. Canary’s remark was made in a conference call with her and Rob Riley, Governor Riley’s son and campaign manager, according to the Times.
"Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary assured the younger Mr. Riley that 'his girls would take care of' Mr. Siegelman before he had a chance to run for the governor’s seat in 2006 and identified 'his girls' as Leura Canary and Alice Martin, the United States attorney in Birmingham."
While covering the Scrushy trial in Birmingham for the Times myself as a free-lance reporter, I tried to get the editors to understand the political bias of the Bush Justice Department and tried to tell them that the case was failing. But I failed to get a single sentence critical of the Bush Justice Department's handling of the case in a single story. The Times demonstrated a bias against Scrushy and for the U.S. Attorney's office, all while former Times correspondent Judith Miller was in jail ostensibly to protect sources in her reporting on the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I suspected they were kissing up to the Bush Justice Department in the Alabama case to try and get Ms. Miller released from jail.
The Times had been through a particularly trying high profile case of plagiarism and making up parts of stories when little Jayson Blair was exposed as a liar, leading to the departure from the Times of Executive Editor Howell Raines from Alabama. The new management seemed to bend over backwards to try and get its access back in the Bush administration, leading to what I thought was particularly shoddy reporting.
During the Birmingham Scrushy trial, I had a disagreement with the new Business section editor at the Times, who had just been hired away from the conservative Wall Street Journal, over an e-mail message, and never did anymore reporting for the Times.
After being a daily reader of the Times for 25 years and after working for them for the better part of two years out of New Orleans in 2002 and 2003, and in Birmingham in 2005, I no longer read the paper and rarely link to it on this Website because of their obvious lack of credibility in reporting on these stories.
This reporting strikes me as too little too late.
As for the Bush Justice Department's politicization of the hiring and firing of federal prosecutors, I also told the Times editors I worked with about an investigative reporting book I had been quoted in going back to the cases of former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt and former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington.
Investigative reporter and former Timesman David Burnham had reported on how the Justice Department had been politicized by both Republican and Democrat presidents. Although in the recent political climate, it has become even more obvious that the Bush Justice Department turns its investigative powers even more on blacks and Democrats and ignores the crimes of white Republicans.
After that incident, I started this independent news Website to use my extensive journalism and academic experience to do things the right way - "without fear or favor." Unfortunately, the corporate news business in the U.S. has become so corrupt with stock market demands that the news gets slanted to the right.
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy were convicted of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud Thursday afternoon in Montgomery by a diverse federal jury that had reported a deadlock after only a few days deliberating.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Don Siegelman: Guilty
Siegelman was convicted on seven counts, including five instances of mail fraud and one instance of bribery involving his dealings with Scrushy, along with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted on 25 other charges, including racketeering and extortion.
The conviction came in a show trial by the Bush Justice Department that will more than likely end Siegelman's life-long political career, which began at the University of Alabama when he was the machine fraternity candidate who served as president of the Student Government Association in the early 1970s.
He went on to serve as executive secretary of the Alabama Democratic Party before getting elected to his first political office, secretary of state in 1978. He also served as attorney general and lieutenant governor before becoming governor and fulfilling his life-long dream in 1998.
Siegelman smiled when he exited the courthouse and talked to the media. He said he was shocked by the verdict and indicated confidence it will be overturned.
"We got a fair trial by a good judge and a great jury," Siegelman said. "This is round one. The truth is we did pretty good in round one. I will take it to the U.S. Supreme Court if I have to."
Siegelman's attorney Vince Kilborn said he doesn't expect the conviction to end Siegelman's political career.
"He's devoted to his philosophy and to the people of Alabama and I don't think he'll ever give that up," Kilborn said.
"If I'm really guilty of this, then every other person in public office ought to look out because everybody is raising money and putting people on boards and commissions," he said. "We're going to win this case on appeal."
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Richard Scrushy: Guilty
Scrushy, who became the most wealthy and celebrated businessman in Alabama in the 1980s and 1990s, was convicted on all six mail fraud and bribery counts leveled against him, along with conspiracy for ostensibly buying a seat on a state health board with $500,000 in contributions to Siegelman's lottery campaign war chest.
Scrushy also said he will be vindicated on appeal.
"This is not right," he said. "I'm very shocked by this."
"This is the worst miscarriage of justice since General Sherman burned Atlanta," Scrushy's attorney Terry Butts said.
Federal prosecutor Louis Franklin told the Associated Press he hopes the verdict sends a message to the political world.
"You shouldn't take bribes," he said. "You shouldn't trade on your office."
Siegelman's former driver and then chief of staff Paul Hamrick, and state transportation director Mack Roberts, were found not guilty on all the charges leveled against them.
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller allowed Siegelman and Scrushy to remain free on bond, the amount undisclosed, and gave attorneys time to file final motions in the case.
Siegelman said the legal costs for the Montgomery case have topped $1 million and supporters have not kicked in much to help this time around, as they did in his bid-rigging case in Tuscaloosa in 2004. He said he only earned about $20,000 last year practicing law.
"I've cashed in all my savings to do the trial," Siegelman said. "You can't expect people to support someone under indictment and going to trial."
Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham reacted to the verdict today by saying everyone's prayers are with Siegelman and his family "during this difficult time."
"The Alabama Democratic Party has great faith in our jury system. While saddened for former Gov Don Siegelman, Democrats vow to continue working in a bipartisan way to rid our political system of any unethical behavior," he said. "Just as Alabama recovered quickly after the felony conviction of Republican Gov. Guy Hunt, the citizens of Alabama will recover again and look with open hearts and minds at candidates with high integrity and vision in fall elections."
He said the recent U.S. Senate Committee Report containing allegations that $13 million in Indian casino money was funneled for Bob Riley's 2002 election, Alabama voters deserve a fresh ethical start and a real commitment to honest and transparent government.
"Lt. Governor Lucy Baxley is the only candidate for governor who has not been implicated in benefiting from illicit campaign contributions," he said in a statement. "We are proud of Lt. Governor Baxley and all our Democratic nominees and know our Democratic team to be some of the most honest and ethical candidates to offer themselves for public office in many years."
Siegelman, Scrushy Found Guilty of Bribery, Conspiracy
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy have been found guilty of bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and mail fraud by the federal jury in Montgomery.
Trouble Between Hung Jury Members in Siegelman Trial
A breathless television news reporter rushed from the federal courthouse in Montgomery late Tuesday afternoon to report that the jurors in the alleged government corruption trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy were about to get in a fight since they could not reach a unaminous verdict.
It turned out a note from the jury foreman sent to U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller said the jurors were still unable to agree on a verdict and that some jury members were described as being "lackadaisical" and not participating in deliberations.
We suspect based on our experience covering trials that the facts will show later, when they all come out, that some of the black members of the jury, who will never vote for a conviction for Siegelman or Scrushy, were just ready to go home and give it up.
The prosecution made a serious mistake by trying Siegelman and Scrushy together with the former members of Siegelman's cabinet, and by bringing down such a complicated 34-count indictment. They should have tried the aides first, then Scrushy, then Siegelman. And they should never have used the RICO statutes, designed to disrupt the Mafia, in such a case. I mean really. Who cares about mail fraud?
They were either guilty of a quid pro quo instance of bribery, or they were just doing business as usual in Montgomery. Either way, a hung jury and a mistrial is a travesty of justice. And the Bush Justice Department should be held accountable.
The hung jury in the Bush Justice Department's alleged corruption trial against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy broke for the weekend about noon Friday after seven days of deliberations without reaching a unanimous verdict .
Attorneys for both sides met with U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in private on what is being reported as a security issue in downtown Montgomery. Sources are saying it is unrelated to the trial.
The judge had told the jury it would be OK to return a partial verdict if they could agree on some of the 34 counts against the four defendants.
So the vigil continues Monday. Check back and hit refresh for updates, here and on the news page.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (LF) - The federal jury in the Bush Justice Department's case against former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy is hung in a deadlock today, meaning they may not be able to reach a verdict and the case is likely over.
The jury reported their inability to reach a unanimous verdict in the 34-count case against four defendants on the sixth day of deliberations in a note to U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller.
Attorney's for Siegelman asked the judge to declare a mistrial.
Fuller declined, however, and gave jurors a "dynamite" Allen charge designed to encourage them to continue working to try and reach a verdict.
"This is an important case," Fuller told jurors. "The trial has been expensive in time, effort and emotional strain on both sides."
The jury left early today from the federal courthouse in Montgomery, but will return Friday morning to continue deliberations one more time.
Could the jury be hung in the federal government trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy after five days of deliberations? It looks like it, according to an Associated Press story just out.
Is it possible that the Bush Justice Department's strategy of trying Siegelman and Scrushy together may backfire, since the case is too complicated to sort out with a 34-count indictment against four defendants? Maybe.
There will be no verdict this week in the trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy. The jury asked a question early about the value of contributions to Siegelman's lottery and education funds, then later took off for the Father's Day weekend without reaching a verdict.
Former Gov. Don Siegelman maintains his innocence outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery, Ala., and insists he is still running for governor.
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller ruled Thursday that deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy will be tried together with former Gov. Don Siegelman and two other defendants in what is being called a "government corruption case" scheduled to begin May 1, according to the Associated Press.
"In this case, the court finds that there is no reasonable possibility that the jury will not be able to keep track of the evidence as it pertains to each defendant," Fuller said in his ruling.
Uh, oh. It looks like Siegelman and Scrushy are screwed. It may be a political prosecution by Republican federal prosecutors in Siegelman's case, but keeping Scrushy at the defense table with Siegelman will make it hard for the jury to separate the charges.
Unless the Scrushy legal team can pack the jury pool with more black jurors, that is, and taint the jury pool in Montgomery the way the press accused them of doing in Birmingham.
As for the Alabama governor's race, it is hard to imagine Siegelman staying in the Democratic Party primary now. Most of the big money Democrats are switching their support to Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, as indicated by the most recent campaign financial disclosure forms.
According to the Birmingham News, Baxley reported $1.2 million in contributions as of Tuesday, while Siegelman showed $105,065 in contributions and a $300,000 loan from his brother.
Deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy contemplates answers to reporter's questions...
It's hard to blame a man who comes from nothing and makes something of himself for turning to God when all the world turns against him.
For all of the flaws of George W. Bush, this is the factor that sustains him with his supporters through the thick fog of war.
Perhaps a brave but wrong man of the South who is not afraid to pray in public can be forgiven.
But a snake oil salesman like Richard Scrushy? I guess he constitutes a different case entirely.
In the old South, a duke of a man like George W. would be pitied, not made king. In the New South, he is allowed to lead the nation into war because there is no one else around with the blood lineage to rise to the throne.
In the old South, a man pretending to be king like Richard Scrushy would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a long, pine rail. In the New South, in an odd twist of modern politics, he is tried over and over again in federal court.
Not having been around Birmingham much during Mr. Scrushy's rise and fall, I was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt and let a jury decide his fate. All of the allegations about manipulating the jury pool by donating money to black churches was still not laid out convincingly enough to lead me to join the mob at his lynching.
Then I watched with a slack jaw the other day as Mr. Scrushy and his Christian bride spent an hour on WOTM making the case for creationism against evolution - on television.
At one point he even said, I kid you not, "there is more proof" for the biblical myth of creationism "than evolution."
I have been reminded of Mark Twain since first encountering the Scrushy story, covering his trial for the New York Times. There was something about him that reminded me of the "rightful King of France" in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Remember the disappeared Dauphin, "Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette?"
I can't get the picture out of my head of a raft on the Mississippi River and the tall talk of a salesman through and through, a Shakespearean actor indeed, on the run from Southerners who got conned.
"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose!," Huck shouted when he and his runaway slave friend thought they had shaken the king and the duke and tried to high-tail it down the river on the raft. "Glory be to goodness, we're shut of them!"
My relatives from St. Clair County would have said, "we're shit of them," but no matter.
Get thee to a nunnery, indeed - or face the rap music in a federal prison.
As for king George, would someone please donate some money to this Web site so we can buy a few more 19-inch TVs to blow out every time he makes a speech or holds a news conference?
If I had a bucket of tar, some feathers and a long, pine rail, I would make another trip to Washington and visit the White House myself.
Where, oh where, has the riotous indignation gone in Alabama against the federal government? Have we finally forgotten the War Between the States?
Perhaps a certain commentator was right in the last election cycle. The pious South has finally won the Civil War.
Watch for the return of the convict-lease system in the next election cycle.
Or maybe with enough of a majority, the Neo-Monarchy Party, otherwise known as the Republican Party, might just feel confident enough to bring back the debate over slavery.
Hey, they had slaves in the old testament, didn't they? If it says it's OK in the "good book," it must be alright with the Allmighty, eh?
This is, afterall, a "different" Republican Party - not exactly the party of Lincoln.
Hey Judge Roy Moore, what do you say? Are you fer it or agin it?
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy takes questions from the media in Montgomery...
Federal Judge Sets May 1 Trial Date in Siegelman, Scrushy Case
U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2002, has set a firm date of May 1 for the alleged conspiracy trial of former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, according to reliable sources. Jury selection starts April 19.
We beat the AP by more than an hour and a half on this break.
Federal Judge Fails To Set Early Trial Date in Siegelman, Scrushy Trial
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Former Gov. Don Siegelman maintains his innocence outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery, Ala., and insists he is still running for governor.
by Glynn Wilson
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2002, failed to set a firm trial date Friday morning in the alleged conspiracy case of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
After trying to resolve scheduling conflicts between defense attorneys, Judge Fuller did recommend a May 1 trial date with jury selection to start April 19 and indicated he reserved a courtroom for the entire month of May. The final decision on a trial date should be made public by the middle of next week after attorneys and the judge have a chance to reschedule court appearances in other cases.
Siegelman maintains his innocence and still intends to run for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor in spite of the conspiracy charges and the trial's disruption of the primary election scheduled for June 6.
Publicly, he indicated his approval for the date since it could mean the trial would be over and the verdict known before June 6. But aides said privately if the trial does not start before May 1 it would spell political trouble for Siegelman. If the trial takes most of the month of May, that would leave little time to raise money and mount a campaign.
U.S. Attorney Leura Garrett Canary, appointed by Bush in 2001, has called the appointment of Scrushy to a state health board by Siegelman - allegedly in return for campaign contributions to promote the statewide lottory plan - "a widespread racketeering conspiracy."
But Siegelman and Scrushy maintain there was no quid pro quo, per se.
Whether the federal government can prove the charges remains to be seen and some experts privately doubt it, especially considering how U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, another Bush appointee, handled the Scrushy and Siegelman cases in Birmingham.
A federal grand jury in Montgomery indicted Siegelman and Scrushy in October, 2005, along with two former members of Siegelman's cabinet, Paul Hamrick and Mack Roberts, although the U.S. Justice Department has been investigating the case for the past five years. Prosecutors in Birmingham failed to get a conviction in a case filed against Siegelman last year. It was dropped for insufficient evidence of a "conspiracy" by Federal District Judge U.W. Clemon, appointed by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
Scrushy faced a jury trial that lasted four months last winter and spring, and he walked away with a "not guilty" verdict.
Judge Fuller did not issue a ruling Friday on whether Roberts and Scrushy would get a separate trial apart from Siegelman and Hamrick, although he hinted to attorneys that until he rules on that issue, they should assume the trials will all be held together.
Federal prosecutor Louis Franklin estimated the trial would take two weeks, according to the Associated Press. But defense attorneys outside the courthouse, including Scrushy attorney Art Leach, said with all the defendants being tried together, and since the government has turned over 120 boxes of material for them to go through, two weeks is not practical.
One aide to Siegelman said the May date is part of a "pattern of delay" by the Justice Department in a partisan effort to plant the conspiracy trial in the heart of the 2006 election campaign.
"They've had 5 years and $40 million," he said. "We have no choice."
Scrushy also responded to questions from reporters Friday morning about an AP story that ran in newspapers all over the country Thursday making the charge that he paid a reporter working through a public relations firm for positive stories during his trial in Birmingham last year.
"These allegations are false," Scrushy said, maintaining that he paid $5,000 on five separate occassions for a church building fund and for Hurricane Katrina relief. He invited reporters to his office to see the evidence and hear tapes that he says prove the charges are false and part of an attempt to extort money from him.
Photo by Glynn Wilson
Former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy exit the federal courthouse in Montgomery Friday morning, with the conspiracy trial's defense entourage, about as far apart as possible.
We'll be in Montgomery this morning and won't be able to blog or update the headlines until the afternoon. In case you missed it:
A scheduling hearing in federal court has been set for 8:30 a.m. in Montgomery Friday in what could be the "conspiracy" show trial of former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
The primary purpose of the hearing before Justice Mark E. Fuller, appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2002, is to set a trial date and rule on pending motions in the case, including one to try Siegelman and Scrushy separately and one for a dismissal of the case for "prosecutorial misconduct."
The judge may also consider and rule on whether there should be a change of venue if there is a trial and other procedural motions relating to jury selection and the admissibility of certain expert witness testimony, and whether or not there was an "actual conspiracy" in the case.
The trial date in the case is critical, especially to the Democratic Party, since the primary vote in the upcoming governor's race is set for June 6. If the trial is scheduled for March or even April, the Siegelman camp feels that would allow plenty of time for a determination in the case and time for a full campaign in the primary - if the case is dropped along the way or results in a not guilty verdict.
A later trial date could put a real crimp in the party's plans, according to party officials and other experts.
One insider in the Siegelman camp - who expressed concerns about delays on the part of the prosecution already - said they have a full realization about the political realities if the hearing on Friday goes badly. A guilty verdict, of course, would certainly knock Siegelman out of the race.
"If it goes badly Friday," according to one highly placed source, "Siegelman's dance in this show may be over."
Siegelman, Scrushy Trial Date Should Be Set Friday
Just when you think it's safe to take a break from the news for a few hours, things start popping again.
According to highly placed and reliable sources, a scheduling hearing in federal court has been set for 8:30 a.m. in Montgomery Friday in what could be the "conspiracy" show trial of former Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
The primary purpose of the hearing before Justice Mark E. Fuller, appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2002, is to set a trial date and rule on pending motions in the case, including one to try Siegelman and Scrushy separately and one for a dismissal of the case for "prosecutorial misconduct."
The judge may also consider and rule on whether there should be a change of venue if there is a trial and other procedural motions relating to jury selection and the admissibility of certain expert witness testimony, and whether or not there was an "actual conspiracy" in the case.
The trial date in the case is critical, especially to the Democratic Party, since the primary vote in the upcoming governor's race is set for June 6. If the trial is scheduled for March or even April, the Siegelman camp feels that would allow plenty of time for a determination in the case and time for a full campaign in the primary - if the case is dropped along the way or results in a not guilty verdict.
A later trial date could put a real crimp in the party's plans, according to party officials and other experts.
One insider in the Siegelman camp - who expressed concerns about delays on the part of the prosecution already - said they have a full realization about the political realities if the hearing on Friday goes badly. A guilty verdict, of course, would certainly knock Siegelman out of the race.
"If it goes badly Friday," according to one highly placed source, "Siegelman's dance in this show may be over."
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman proclaimed his innocence on government corruption charges Wednesday and HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy also pleaded not guilty to charges he gave Siegelman $500,000 for a seat on a state health board.
Paul Hamrick said later that Republican prosecutors have been trying to get Siegelman since shortly after he took office in 1999, according to the AP.
“Seven years and untold amounts of money have been spent on this unholy crusade,” Hamrick said.
Now we have no idea if this is an unholy crusade or a holy crusade, but if the verdict in the original Scrushy trial is any indication, it may very well turn out to be a failed crusade. First of all, it's an amended indictment by the federal grand jury. Not a good sign for the prosecution.
We don't know much about U.S. Attorney Leura Garrett Canary, and there's not much information about her on the Middle District Web site. One thing is striking right away, however. ALL the U.S. attorneys listed are women. The key questions? Are they all Republicans appointed by Bush who go to the same church?
Well, how long will it take the press here to start blaming Scrushy's donations to black churches in this case? It's all about going to the right church, right?
It has taken us a couple of days to figure out what to say about this story in Sunday's Birmingham News . . . what with all the holiday hoopla and respiratory difficulties and all.
But it looks like the News is still trying to convict poor rich Richard Scrushy after the fact.
Notice the lead:
Richard Scrushy's charitable foundation gave more than $700,000 in 2004 to churches and organizations whose leaders regularly attended his criminal trial this year, tax documents show.
We are glad the News is spending time documenting these things. But it is perplexing why most of their charitable giving stories have a much different and more positive spin.
In this day and age, it can't be a racist thing, can it? Is there something inherently wrong about a rich guy who started a successful company giving money to black churches?
Yes, Scrushy cashed in on his stock options and a lot of people lost money. And a bunch of CFO's of the company have pleaded guilty to posting false numbers on the books to keep the stock price up.
But none of them are spending much time in jail so far. And because of Scrushy's acquittal, the lawyers in the civil cases are stuck with the task of proving Scrushy guilty to recover damages in a case that could be analogous to the O.J. civil case.
Now I was long gone from Alabama while the entire HealthSouth debacle went down, so I was quite objective when I returned to my home town of Birmingham to cover the Scrushy trial for the New York Times. In my 25 years of covering the news, including hundreds of trials, I have rarely seen news organizations spend so much of their time and space going against the decision of a jury.
Pundits always like to say we are a nation of laws. If that is true, do we not have a responsibility to respect a jury's verdict - even if we don't like it?
Then, even more perplexing in this case, not a single news organization has bothered to mention the fact that the prosecution team that lost the case against Scrushy - and the judge - were church going Republicans appointed by none other than the dick-tater in chief himself, George W. Bush.
Oh, that's right, the Birmingham News endorsed Bush for president. And it spends an inordinate amount of its local news hole these days pandering to Christian Republicans.
I guess the truth is hard to find in the news game these days. Could that have something to do with the lack of respect for news organizations and just maybe part of the reason for the downward spiral in circulation?
Former HealthSouth Corp. Chairman Richard Scrushy is seeking millions of dollars in damages in a pair of lawsuits that accuse the Birmingham News and Alabama radio personality and sports columnist Paul Finebaum of defaming him, according to the Birmingham News.
U.S. Attorney Alice Martin Claims Judge Clemon is Soft on Crime?
The U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama is not a happy camper, according to the Corporate Crime Reporter.
Earlier this year, her showcase white-collar crime prosecution against former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy went down in flames when a jury found Scrushy not guilty on all counts.
And while her office has convicted 17 HealthSouth executives, only three have been sentenced to jail - and only one has served time....
In September, Presiding federal Judge U.W. Clemon sentenced Michael Martin to seven days in jail for his role.
“It makes no sense,” Martin told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview. “It is intellectually dishonest. If you have a bank robbery, and three people rob the bank but law enforcement only catches and prosecutes two, do you say - well, gosh, because we didn't catch the third, we can't send these two to jail?”
“Mike Martin was the CFO, he was the longest serving CFO during this fraud,” she said. “And he made tremendous profit - in fact, I believe the most personal profit of any of these officers prosecuted. And he deserved jail time. I don't know why certain judges want to be soft on white-collar crime. It sends a horrible message to the public.”
And Martin said that she was disappointed that only three of the 17 convicted HealthSouth defendants were sentenced to prison.
Judge Clemon sentenced all the remaining defendants to probation or probation and home detention.
Perhaps Ms. Martin should take a look at her own role in the failed prosecution of Richard Scrushy and her office's decision to make so many deals in advance of the Scrushy trial just to "get" him. Maybe someone should take a look at why the local FBI office doesn't know the difference between a digital recorder and a tape recorder - or how to use either effectively.
After covering the trial myself, it is obvious there are more political problems in the local justice system than anyone knows...
Siegelman, Scrushy Indicted for Bribery, Extortion
A federal grand jury indicted former Gov. Don Siegelman, ex-HealthSouth chief Richard Scrushy and two others on charges in a “widespread racketeering conspiracy" that included bribery and extortion, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday in Montgomery, Alabama, according to the Associated Press.
Siegelman says he will not drop out of the governor's race, but he may as well, unless he plans to take the tack of former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards and become a political caricature.
As for Scrushy, his lawyer Donald Watkins told the New York Times last night that the charges were "ridiculous."
"A HealthSouth check went into a lawful political action committee registered with the secretary of state," he said. The contribution was disclosed, he said, and "nothing was sought in exchange."
Mr. Watkins accused federal prosecutors of "retaliating" for Mr. Scrushy's acquittal of federal charges in a trial in Birmingham, Ala., involving a $2.7 billion security fraud at HealthSouth.
"Apparently the spanking we gave them in Birmingham was not sufficient," Mr. Watkins said. "We will have to do a better job in Montgomery."
The Times hates Scrushy so much that they led with his indictment above the former Alabama governor, which is a strange twist in news judgement.
They may both walk, but not without severe damage to thier reputations. That's why we have been talking about Lucy Baxley on the radio since July.
It was just a matter of time. We've been telling people for months to watch for deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy to form his own church. That's the real path to riches in this country of dumbass religious fanatics.
Now, according to the Birmingham News, he has gone and done it.
President George W. Bush was seen on cable news this morning signing the CAFTA trade agreement, in what CNN's White House correspondent called "a gloatfest," since the bill only passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by two votes. Are you feeling the screws turning yet?
Meanwhile, the Birmnigham Snooze did manage to eke out a story of sorts today on the sneaky visit of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Although it just demonstrates the pathetic and rear-end kissing nature of mainstream journalism these days.
Even in my early days in journalism at the University of Alabama's Crimson White student newspaper, I would have been laughed out of the newsroom for reporting that a government official such as Gonzales was "pleased with Martin and the direction the U.S. attorney's office is taking."
So he is pleased that the U.S. attorneys office in Birmingham has lost every high profile case to come before it? And to change the subject, they indict former Jefferson County commissioner Chris McNair, who lost his daughter in the 16th Street Church bombing, for some renovation work on the photography studio dedicated to the memorial of his daughter?
Aren't you so pleased that the Birmingham News is pleased with the pleasing idiots who are running the country? I guess it beats hiding out in the bushes and catching a Democrat in an affair with a reporter, eh? How's that circulation doing these days? Do you think people are pleased with your pleasing BS?
Attorney General Gonzales Sneaks into B'ham. for PR
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales snuck into Birmingham, Alabama, with no advance notice today and with no clear mission, at least according to the way NBC Channel 13 and ABC 33/40 news reported the visit. There's no link up yet, but from the little interviews on TV, it looked like another instance of Bush administration officials using local TV news for PR purposes.
One reporter did manage to eke out a question about U.S. Attorney Alice Martin. The predictable answer: Gonzales supports her.
As for the loss in the case of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy and the dismissal of the case against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, he said, "These are hard cases."
Duh.
Like Bush said during the presidential debates, "It's hard work."
Right. Try incompetence if not downright corruption.
Perhaps the local TV news reporters should check out WhiteHouse.Org to find out some facts about our esteemed attorney general.
And maybe someone over at the Birmingham Snooze or the AP might consider doing their jobs and letting us know this stuff is coming in advance. I had a few questions for Gonzales myself.
For starters, how does he justify his position on torture of prisoners and his oath as an attorney and attorney general?
I hate to say I told you so, but if I didn't, how would you the reader keep score?
According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama, Alice Martin, said Wednesday she was not going to try Richard Scrushy again on criminal charges for the accounting fraud at Healthsouth.
Martin said she would not appeal Judge Karen Bowdre's decision to dismiss perjury charges against Mr. Scrushy, who was found not guilty of directing a $2.7 billion fraud at the rehabilitation hospital company he founded.
After Scrushy's trial last month, the Bush appointed Republican federal prosecutors said they would ask an appeals court to reinstate criminal charges accusing Scrushy of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission about an earnings overstatement. But the Bush appointed judge threw out the three perjury counts during the case.
In an interview with the AP, Ms. Martin said the government had decided against an appeal.
The decision means, according to the AP's Jay Reeves, that Scrushy will not have to face a second criminal trial.
Every reporter and court room observer I asked about this right after the not guilty verdict said the government would try the case again, maybe with a change of venue.
I told the New York Times reporters working this case and others, including the reporter for Birmingham Weekly, to watch this. I said the prosecution would make a show right after the trial of retrying Scrushy, then eventually they would abandon the effort. The case took too much time and resources away from the thousands of other cases pending in the court system. No one would want another four month show trial, especially since they may lose it again.
Guess I should have bet another six pack of Yuengling on it, eh?
At one time in the news game, editors and publishers valued the work of reporters who were consistently right and almost always first. These days, it seems to be all about the money. That is not only sad, it does not bode well for the future of big, corporate news organizations with waning public trust in the press.
Richard Scrushy 'Not Guilty' in HealthSouth Fraud Trial
Jurors unanimously acquitted deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy of conspiracy and all counts Tuesday in the Bush Justice Department's attempt to put him away and take all his assets in what prosecutors called a $2.7 billion earnings overstatement at the rehabilitation and medical services chain.
The charge, with sweeping implications because it included allegations of fraud, false corporate reporting and making false statements to regulators, was the first in a 36-count indictment against Scrushy, the first CEO charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reporting law, the AP is reporting.
The court session continued as jurors announced their decision on the Sarbanes-Oxley charge and others against Scrushy, who blamed the massive accounting scheme on subordinates including all five finance chiefs who served under him at HealthSouth.
In all, 15 former HealthSouth executives have pleaded guilty since 2003, when the scandal erupted publicly and drove the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
Colorful defense attorney Jim Parkman from Dothan said he was not confident going into the trial against the federal government in the Hugo Black federal courthouse in downtown Birmingham.
"You would be a fool to go in confident," he said. "Thank goodness it came out the way it did."
Fox News is reporting that Scrushy "wiped away a tear" as the verdict was read, then hugged his wife and pastor.
At the same time the team of U.S. attorneys "looked stoically ahead."
Mr. Scrushy walked out of the courthouse a free man at about 12:24 p.m. and thanked a lot of people, including "The Lord."
He said he had alot to say, but not now. "There will be a time to talk. There are a long of wrongs that need to be made right," he said. Donald Watkins said the credentialed press should meet the defense team at the Embassy Suites "in one hour."
Losing U.S. Attorney Alice Martin walked out at 12:40 and said she was "disappointed."
"We had to show he made a decision to do it (fix the numbers)," she said. "It was our job to present the evidence. We did. I'm shocked at the verdict."
She said the case should have no impact on the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reporting law, which "will be tested again."
***
From the live press conference at the Embassy Suites:
Donald Watkins announced his retirement, saying a win on an 85 count indictment was a great way to go out.
Jim Parkman told a few stories too.
"I was concerned not to have a situation like the O.J. case, lawyers arguing amongst themselves," he said. "We had a few, just family squabbles. We had a good plan and we stuck with it."
He said he came to understand the negative feeling some people in Birmingham have of Mr. Scrushy, since he came with negative views himself, he said.
"You have to get to know a person before you cast doubts. It might change your opinion," he said. "It changed mine."
He said Scrushy was not a control freak. "He certainly didn't control me," he said.
He also took a shot at Paul Finebaum for calling him "a country hick and a bumpkin," he said. "You just elevated me to a new plateau."
U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre replaced an ill juror with an alternate today in the fraud trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy. She reinstructed the jury and told them to start over from scratch, according to the AP.
The juror was identified only as a man who had "recurring health problems." The announcement followed a closed-door meeting with attorneys from both sides.
The action came in the wake of a federal appeals court ruling vacating the light sentences of two former financial officers on Tuesday.
The press and TV news media scrambled to report any development in the case, although there is no indication now that a verdict is in the offing anytime soon. The jury has deliberated a total of 16 days over the past month after indicating in questions to the judge that they could not reach a consensus on any of the remaining 36 counts against Mr. Scrushy.
Experts do not know what to think at this point, although the handicapping is still indicating a hung jury and mistrial.
"Let's say you're a rich white guy who - according to the feds - has cooked the books at his company to get even richer, inflating earnings to the tune of $2.7 billion. What do you do when the law comes after you?"
That's the question from Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in this controversial editorial opinion column reprinted in the Birmingham News today.
Do you throw yourself on the mercy of the court? Do you flee the country before you're arrested? Do you stick to a traditional defense of staunchly maintaining your innocence?
Well, if you're Richard Scrushy - founder and former CEO of Birmingham-based HealthSouth, a rehabilitation services company - you try to pass yourself off as a black man who is the victim of government persecution. Strange as it may seem, the strategy may be working.
Most of Richard Scrushy's defense team flew home for the weekend Friday night and skipped the hung jury celebration on the Southside of Birmingham. Only Donald Watkins showed up at Lou's Pub to down a few Heineken's and field questions from reporters.
Jurors in the case went home dejected and split. Presumably, the prosecution team went home disappointed to cry in thier milk, with cookies of course.
No amount of questioning could shake Watkins in his belief that the jury will come back next week and reconsider one more time and decide to turn its deadlock on all counts into reasonable doubt with a final vote of acquittal.
While most courtroom observers seem to have no idea how many on the jury are holding out for a guilty or a not guilty verdict, Watkins did not hesitate.
"I think it's 11 to 1 for acquittal," he told me. "This case was over when the SEC case fell apart and they released Scrushy's assets."
It is hard to tell if he is really serious and knows what he is talking about or is just in the business of trying to spin the story in his favor and potentially effect the outcome - if jurors ignore the judge's order not to read anything about the case during their deliberations. Is it possible that jurors sneak around and watch the TV news, read the newspaper or surf the Net for news about the trial?
Stranger things have happened in my 21 years of experience covering trials. I'm not so sure he's right at this point. If I were betting today, I would put the entire six pack on the jury staying hung.
The New York Times' Simon Romero was the most visible reporter at the pub, working as he sometimes does with a free-lance stringer and a free-lance photographer. Pub patrons have by now become used to the sight of a photographer snapping pictures around the room, although the phenomenon has begun to draw some interesting characters to the place.
Dr. Hugh Cort III, a Birmingham psychiatrist who is running as a Republican for president in 2008, shook hands with the people, soliciting their votes, and harassed reporters to give him some publicity.
Who knows? Maybe we'll start a radio show and make Hannity and Colmes look like dumbass amateurs.
And like anyone with a lot of money and a certain amount of celebrity, even of the infamous kind, Watkins draws an entourage.
I couldn't resist striking up a conversation with a particularly attractive blonde named Christine Butler, the marketing director of a new airline called "Southern Skies."
The white smoke went out at the Hugo Black federal courthouse in downtown Birmingham Friday afternoon. The jury in the fraud trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy is hopelessly deadlocked on all counts, meaning the case in on the verge of a hung jury and a mistrial. The judge sent them back with an Allen charge, but the likelyhood of a change in the next few days seems slim, experts say.
For the record, we had this story online before AP, the Birmingham News, the New York Times, or any of the Birmingham TV news stations - even before the Scrushy trial blogger.
And I hate to say we told you so, but I've being saying it since January: "All it takes is one" for a hung jury.
The question now becomes: Will the Bush Justice Department use more time and tax money trying the case again, letting other cases go by the wayside? Or will they give up the ghost and let Scrushy go free and maybe consider putting some of the former financial officers who faked the numbers in jail?
Stay tuned. We'll have more tonight from the inside of Birmingham's night life.
Reuters Puts Scrushy Jury Race Makeup In Spotlight
The divided jury in the corporate fraud trial of former HealthSouth Corp. Chief Executive Richard Scrushy adjourned on Friday after a seventh day of fruitless deliberations - and his lawyers could hardly contain their delight, writes Paul Simao of Reuters in this report.
Prosecutors were increasingly glum this week, doggedly rebuffing reporters' attempts to guess which way the jury was leaning in the trial in Birmingham, Alabama, and the stark contrast, besides signaling a shift in momentum and a possible mistrial after nearly four months of testimony, put attention on the strategies used to choose the jury in January.
Scrushy's team hired a consultant during "voir dire," the process in which attorneys question and often strike potential jurors. They declined to say what was spent on this part of the case, but said it was "pennies" compared to the government. . . .
Scrushy's defense was happy with its results.
"All in all, I couldn't conceive of a better jury," said Jim Parkman, an attorney for Scrushy, who is accused of orchestrating a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at the Birmingham-based medical rehabilitation firm.
"I think we have a jury of his peers," said Donald Watkins, another member of the defense.
There are seven men and five women on the jury, which was polled from three counties around Birmingham. Half are black, not an unusual number in the city but higher than what one would expect based on the population of these counties.
Race may be a factor in this case, say some, because Scrushy, a white 52-year-old multimillionaire, is a high-profile member of a predominantly black nondenominationalChristian church in Birmingham.
He joined in 2003, the year he was ousted from his position at HealthSouth. His choice of churches was seen as somewhat unusual in the Deep South, with its history of racial segregation.
In addition, Scrushy has preached in several other black churches and donated money to their congregations. A number of black pastors and worshipers came out to support him during the trial in downtown Birmingham.
Scrushy's lawyers skirt the issue when asked whether they tried to stack the jury with blacks, but admit they took an interest in the religious beliefs of potential jurors, hoping to select as many believers as possible.
Alabama has a large number of fundamentalist Christians and one of the nation's highest church attendance rates.
For their part, prosecutors refuse to talk about what motivated them during jury selection. . . .
One of Birmingham's mediocre alternative newspapers, Black and White, is now predicting acquittal for deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy in the high profile fraud trial playing out at the Hugo Black federal courthouse downtown.
"The conventional wisdom holds that Richard Scrushy is about as guilty as they come. However, I don't think the jury will reach that unanimous conclusion, and I expect Scrushy to be exonerated of all of the charges against him," writes Chuck Geiss in his column called Naked Birmingham.
More:
The fraud case against Healthsouth founder Richard Scrushy was supposed to be a slam-dunk effort, complete with taped conversations, a mountain of compelling evidence, and five former CFOs lined up to testify against him. But over the last four months, the prosecution stumbled and appeared awkward while Scrushy's defense team looked sharp, confident, even funny, as they countered testimony by key prosecution witnesses.
Rulings by U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre have also gone largely Scrushy's way, including her recent dismissal of 10 of the 58 charges against him on grounds that the government failed to prove its case. Now it comes down to a 12-person jury to decide whether any of the government's arguments are persuasive. If I were Scrushy, I'd be chilling a case of Dom Perignon right now.
As they like to say in N'Awlins, "Yeah, you right."
Scrushy Jurors Deadlocked on Key Conspiracy Charge
Confused and deadlocked on a key count in their sixth day of deliberations, jurors in the trial of former HealthSouth Corp. chief Richard Scrushy got a judge's OK Thursday to move on to other charges beyond the conspiracy, the AP is reporting.
"We cannot reach a unanimous decision on Count One Conspiracy." The word "cannot" was underlined for emphasis.
The note, with grammatical errors, continued: "This question have been asked, but a simple yes or no to this 1 count will let me know if their is a need to move on to the other counts."
Asking the judge directly whether the verdict on the conspiracy count must be unanimous, the note asked the judge to circle either "yes" or "no" to indicate an answer.
Repeating instructions the jury already has heard several times, Bowdre told them any verdict must be unanimous and added: "But you do not have to approach the counts in any particular order."
Scrushy was smiling as he left court.
"I like what I saw," Scrushy said. His attorneys say they want an acquittal rather than a hung jury and mistrial.
The conspiracy charge encompasses a number of allegations, including fraud, false corporate reporting and false statements to regulators.
And a large part of the defense strategy was to make the case that Mr. Scrushy either knew about the fraud, which would make him guilty, or that he didn't know, which would be reasonable doubt and therefore not guilty. If the jury can't decide unanimously on the main charge, it is hard to imagine them convicting Mr. Scrushy on the other charges, although it could happen.
The judge in Richard Scrushy's fraud trial is trying to prevent the case against the former HealthSouth Corp. CEO from winding up in a deadlocked jury and mistrial, the AP reports.
Responding to questions from jurors, U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre instructed the panel for a third time Wednesday on a pivotal conspiracy charge, a complicated Count One with a verdict form that is four pages long covering a range of alleged white-collar crimes.
After saying that either an acquittal or a guilty verdict must be unanimous and explaining details of the decisions required for a verdict, Bowdre sent the panel back to begin a fifth day of deliberations.
According to one national reporter in town for the final story in the case, a verdict is not likely by this weekend.
For more from Birmingham's own Scrushy trial blogger, head on over to Phil Smith's blog The Scrushy Report.
And if that's not enough, and you are interested in knowing how Mr. Scrushy spread his political contributions around over the years to the likes of Georgia Democrat Max Cleland and Republican Newt Gingrich, check out the list from Newsmeat.com.
Now that the trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy is all over but the shoutin', er, the jury verdict, the Associated Press finally gets around to reporting on the role of race in the proceedings in this story under the headline:
Duh. As my reporting for the New York Times indicated back in February - most of it never published and not recognized by any other publication covering the trial - there is a long-standing power struggle between the feds in the U.S. Attorneys office and the federal courthouse in Birmingham and the powers that be at Birmingham City Hall.
In a long interview with former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington in February, he told me about an interesting incident in the early 1990s when then-U.S. Attorney Frank Donaldson announced that Arrington would be investigated as an unindicted co-conspirator in an eight-year-long investigation into corruption at City Hall.
As Birmingham readers will recall, that investigation never led to an indictment of Arrington. Donaldson announced the end of that investigation before he retired.
What is interesting is that the day after Donaldson's announcement, Mr. Scrushy stood up at a fund raiser luncheon honoring the mayor at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center downtown and defended Arrington in a very public way against the feds.
Could there be some leftovers of that power struggle in the investigation of Scrushy?
"At that lunch, he got up and criticized the feds and expressed total confidence in me. That took a lot of guts," Arrington told me. "I don't know if there's any carryover. But I think there are two things that make it possible that there's still some taste in their mouths about that situation.
"Number one, when Richard Scrushy stood up at that luncheon with the corporate people there, and expressed his total confidence in me and criticized the U.S. attorneys office, a week following that he had feds down there in his office questioning his staff and some of his physicians. I think it was just a harassment that they were carrying out.
"The second thing is Donald Watkins. Donald has his own style, as you know, sort of an attack and slash style and he's very public with it. And so, I am sure that the U.S. attorneys office is mindful of Donald Watkins and that is probably why they succeeded in getting a gag order on the attorneys (in the Scrushy case).
"Donald's style, in defense, is to reveal everything that's negative about the federal investigation. He likes to roll it out there rather than keep it in the dark. That was his approach when he was defending me. When we found out what the feds were doing, every time we found out they were questioning somebody, we would go get an affidavit and make it public. We didn't want them to work in the dark. We wanted to keep 'em out in the light so they had to show their hands all the time.
"And that's Donald's style, so I sort of suspect, for that reason, the U.S. attorneys office still has a little taste about how he dealt with them in defending me."
Perhaps the definitive account of how the feds in those days under President Ronald Reagan were investigating black Democrats and ignoring the crimes of white Republicans - like disgraced former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt - is documented in this book on the Justice Department.
I am sitting on a lot more reporting that also never appeared, including some great golf stories from sports columnist and talk show host Paul Finebaum.
Here's one:
In one golf round at Shoal Creek one year, back when HealthSouth was a big sponsor of the golf tournament they hold there every year, former University of Florida football coach Steve Spurrier was in the foursome along with a former Alabama Crimson Tide football star - and Scrushy. At one point Spurrier noticed Scrushy cheating. Being a scratch golfer and a stickler for the rules himself, he was quite appalled and remarked to Finebaum, "Anybody who would cheat at golf would cheat at business."
Now I would not presume to take a position in the case. I am truly objective in the sense that I don't care which way the jury decides. But it looks like my suspicions all along about a possible hung jury may be right on the money.
As the AP reported Saturday in this story, the jury asked this question only hours after being sequestered away to deliberate.
"If we can not decide unanimously one way or another, what happens?'"
Uh, huh.
Meanwhile, I ran into Birmingham attorney Doug Jones in Memphis at Rick Bragg's wedding at the Peabody Hotel and asked him to assess my handicapping of the possible jury verdict. As my readers know, I have a standing bet of one six pack for acquittal - even though I've been predicting a hung jury for months. No takers yet, but you can still get in on the action by e-mailing me or hitting the comments link.
"I think he's in for a fall," Jones said of Scrushy.
But then, he represents some of the HealthSouth investors who lost money on the stock in the civil case, which would get a boost by a conviction in the criminal case.
As you can see, real objectivity is hard to come by in these times. We can only hope the jury gets it right behind closed doors.
The jury is to begin deliberating today in U.S. District Court in the case of Richard Scrushy, 52, who faces "dozens of years in prison," according to this report in today's Birmingham News - if he is convicted of running a $2.64 billion fraud that cheated HealthSouth investors from 1996 through most of 2002.
The closing arguments were a theatrical pause in a trial that rested heavily on financial documents and accounting principles, the News reports. Jurors heard six hours of arguments "that included voice imitations and appeals to patriotism. They saw a visual display of a giant cartoon mouse with a block of cheese on his head."
This is funny? Hmmm.
Perhaps you will find the Birmingham blogger's take more interesting?
"After coming to Birmingham, and after fifty-five days in the courtroom, I sometimes feel like I am reliving Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. Especially after today," says Philip Smith of the Report from Birmingham blog. "Dim the lights in the courtroom and I could be sitting in the corner with a spider (or perhaps a rat) on my head, saying, 'The Horror. The Horror.' In a trial that often saw a lot of everything, and sometimes, a great deal of nothing, the closing arguments proved there's always a little more after you're sure you've seen it all."
Or perhaps the New York Times version is more your style?
"Employing a folksy and colorful Southern style that he has used throughout this nearly four-month criminal trial, Jim Parkman, one of the defense lawyers, told the jury in closing arguments that Mr. Scrushy was a victim of a far-ranging conspiracy by his underlings. Mr. Parkman even displayed a poster-size cartoon of a rat with a piece of cheese to attack the credibility of one of the government's main witnesses, William T. Owens, a former HealthSouth chief financial officer who testified that Mr. Scrushy was behind the fraud," the Times reports.
While we wait for a verdict in the fraud trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, how 'bout a little drinking music?
They Oughta Name a Drink After You
by John Prine
Oh I get drunk most every night
Seems like all we do is fight
The more I drink
The less I feel blue
Sometimes I feel like an awful fool
Spendin' my life on an old bar stool
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you
If this date were to be our last
I'd never sit down this glass
It'd take all the booze in the world
To forget you
You've left my heart a vacant lot
I'll fill it with another shot
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you
Looks like I had my fill
Guess I better pay my bill
When I started out I only meant to have a few
Someone just said that you left town
I better get a double round
And yes I guess they oughta name a drink after you . . .
Prosecutors urged jurors Wednesday to convict former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy in a $2.7 billion fraud, claiming he pulled off the huge crime with the stroke of a pen by signing financial statements he knew were false, the AP is reporting.
"He led this conspiracy just like he led that corporation," U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said
She said Scrushy - seated just a few feet away at the defense table - was "the quintessential micromanager."
"He had his finger on the pulse of HealthSouth," she said.
Scrushy made some $275 million from the fraud simply by signing financial reports containing billions of dollars in false numbers, she said.
"All it took was a signature on 10Ks and 10Qs that he knew contained false financial information," Martin said.
Defense closing arguments will come later; U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre gave each side three hours to talk to jurors Wednesday.
The defense will present its closing arguments this afternoon, then it will be up to the jury. Will there be a verdict by this weekend? Will Scrushy walk a free man, get slapped on a few charges and get a fine and no jail time, or will they throw the book at him? Place your bets in the comments section.
My money's on a hung jury at this point, although I will give odds of 69-31 for acquittal. Or, to round things off, how about one six pack of Yuengling at 2-1? Any takers?
Of course, as Dennis Miller likes to say, "I could be wrong."
As the sun was setting on the Southside of Birmingham on Wednesday, deposed HealthSouth founder Richard M. Scrushy's defense team gathered at a popular night spot called Lou's Pub and breathed a collective sign of relief.
They had "been in the pit" they said, referring to the Hugo Black federal courthouse, almost every day for the better part of almost four months. But they rested their case yesterday - without calling Mr. Scrushy to the stand - and it was time for a strong drink.
Donald Watkins, the billionaire African-American attorney and successful businessman, seemed confident that his client would walk away a free, rich man as he shed his tie and chatted with two reporters from the Wall Street Journal.
As he was about to leave for another bar in Homewood, he told me to "be there" at the courthouse Monday for closing arguments. "We are going to run them out of the courthouse," he said, referring to the U.S. attorneys office team prosecuting the case.
Dothan attorney Jim Parkman had changed out of his courthouse suit and seemed comfortable and confident in blue jeans and a short-sleeved orange shirt. He had mixed feelings about ending the case without bringing Mr. Scrushy to the stand, and without one final rebuttal shot from the prosecution.
U.S. Attorney Alice Martin passed on the opportunity to call any rebuttal witnesses after the defense rested.
"I was glad, but also sad," Parkman said. "I believe we got in some issues that were uncontested, so it worked out. But I would kind of liked to have had one more shot at them on cross."
He said the defense team voted unanimously not to have Mr. Scrushy testify even though he had been preparing his testimony for weeks.
"He was ready," Mr. Parkman said. "But we felt the jury was ready and had had enough. It was time to put it to rest."
Mr. Scrushy's hired gun public relations man, Charlie Russell, said if the team had felt like the chances of acquittal were only 50-50, "We would have put him on the stand."
Word on the street is that Mr. Scrushy will walk, since the defense team has the jury under control and the prosecution failed to adequately tie him to the accounting fraud with a bright line paper trail.
He is accused of orchestrating a $2.7 billion fraud on the books starting in the late 1990s at the company he founded in the early 1980s. A host of former financial officers pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Scrushy. But according to the defense, Jim Goodreau did their side the most good, especially on the charge of money laundering.
"Jim Goodreau put a dagger in their case," Russell said. He testified about several important meetings at HealthSouth in which Mr. Scrushy was shown not to know the details on the books or the extent of the "conspiracy" allegedly cooked up by "the family" of former Healthsouth managers and accountants.
In recent weeks, federal district judge Karen O. Bowdre has grown more and more impatient with the prosecution for improperly comparing the HealthSouth case to Enron, the failed energy company out of Houston.
I asked several daily courthouse observers, including a couple of reporters, what they thought the judge would do with the case against Scrushy if it were up to her and not the jury. They all said the same words in separate interviews: "She would throw it out."
In the old days, there would have been a betting pool for verdicts like this. But that is no longer politically correct. If I were a book maker or a betting man, I would put the odds at 69-31 in favor of acquittal.
But you never know what goes on behind the closed doors of a jury room.
If convicted, Mr. Scrushy could face a large fine and some jail time. But I doubt it would be anywhere near as high as the Associated Press and other news organizations have been reporting in story after story since the first week of the trial. A life sentence and $278 million? Fat chance.
The defense rested today without calling deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy to the stand, the Associated Press is reporting.
Apparently the U.S. Attorney's office wore itself out too, failing to rebutt any of the defense witnesses further and ending the trial earlier than projected.
Maybe it's worth a visit to Lou's Pub tonight to get the low down. Stay tuned.
A federal judge indicated Tuesday she would dismiss three perjury charges from the 58 total counts against Richard Scrushy as jurors got an in-depth look at the vast fortune prosecutors say the former HealthSouth CEO made because of a massive fraud, the Associated Press reports.
Guess it may be time to check back in on the Hugo Black courthouse in Birmingham myself, now that Cowboy is back in town.
President Bush embraces Karl Rove on his resignation day in August
