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.

Federal Judge Refuses to Release Siegelman on Appeal Bond

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?

Appeals Court Remands Siegelman Sentencing Back to Trial Judge

Update

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.

Feaga Defends Siegelman Prosecution After Time Report

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.

Download Fuller's ruling here

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?