Mississippi Churning, Part XXI

Let's return to our focus on the Paul Minor case in Mississippi, looking at evidence that illustrates the weakness of the government's case.

From checking various court documents, we learn the following:

* The government sent more than 30 agents to go through files at Minor & Associates, Paul Minor's law firm on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. (Remember Paul Minor was a major contributor to John Edwards' campaign, and we are slowly learning details about what appears to be a concerted Bush Justice Department campaign to investigate contributors to both Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Was Paul Minor one of the first major Democratic donors to be targeted in this orchestrated Justice Department campaign?)

* During the period covered by the indictment, roughly 1998 to 2003, Paul Minor's firm filed 728 cases. Out of all those cases, how many did the government's 30-some agents find that they could build their case around? Two.

* You heard that right. Two cases out of 728 raised enough questions for the government to build an indictment. And we already have written extensively about those two cases--Archie Marks and Peoples Bank.

* Marks was a personal-injury case, where a roustabout suffered a disabling back injury while working on an oil rig. The company in charge of the oil rig clearly was negligent in failing to provide safe working conditions, even though it holds a particularly high burden under maritime law to protect workers who are vulnerable because they are working offshore. The evidence is overwhelming that Judge John Whitfield ruled correctly based on the facts and the law in the case, and therefore was not influenced by any alleged "bribe" from attorney Paul Minor.

* Peoples Bank was a bad-faith insurance case, where a Biloxi bank sought coverage from USF&G. In an almost identical case at the time, another Mississippi judge had found that USF&G was obligated to provide coverage. That judge, in a case that did not involve Paul Minor, was not indicted; Judge Wes Teel, in a case that did involve Paul Minor, was indicted. The Mississippi Supreme Court eventually ruled that USF&G did not owe coverage, setting new legal precedent. But at the time of his ruling, Teel clearly was within established Mississippi law. Just as in Whitfield's case, Teel ruled correctly based on the facts and the law at the time, and therefore was not influenced by any alleged "bribe" from attorney Paul Minor.

* So we've looked at the two underlying lawsuits at the heart of the government's corruption case against Paul Minor, Wes Teel, and John Whitfield. And we've shown just how weak the government's case was in both instances. And keep this in mind: This was the best the government could come up with.

* Finally, let's look at the financial activity upon which the government built its case. It showed that Minor had helped guarantee loans to Teel and Whitfield. According to the government, Minor used these loan guarantees to gain an "unfair advantage" in cases he had before the two judges. But here is the key: Under Mississippi law at the time, it was perfectly legal for an attorney to give money, guarantee a loan, or provide other financial gifts to judges. (It still is legal, although caps have been put on the amounts that can be given.) The government shined a spotlight on Paul Minor for guaranteeing loans to two judges? But how widespread was the practice of lawyers providing financial help to judges or judicial candidates? In 1998, 580 Mississippi lawyers gave money to lawyers who were running for office.

* So we know that Paul Minor was one of 580 Mississippi lawyers in 1998 to give money to lawyers running for office. Which raises this question: Paul Minor was indicted because his clients received "favorable" rulings in two cases before judges Minor had helped financially. Does that mean that the 579 other Mississippi lawyers never won a case before a judge they had supported financially? Does that seem a little hard to believe to you? It sure does to me? So where are the indictments on these other lawyers? Is it possible that these lawyers were not as wealthy as Paul Minor, and had not been as upfront about supporting Democratic candidates, so therefore they were not targets of the government?

* According to the government's perverse logic, any lawyer who had given financial support to a judge (which is legal) would have to lose every case before that judge. If the lawyer did not lose every case, both the lawyer and the judge would be guilty of federal crimes.

* And finally, let's return to this critical point. The government's indictment said Minor used loan guarantees to gain an "unfair advantage" in certain cases and to receive "favorable rulings." But the terms "unfair advantage" and "favorable rulings" are nowhere to be found in the statutory language involving bribery and honest-services mail fraud, the two key charges in the Minor case. Under the actual law, here' s what matters in a federal bribery case: That the act was done "corruptly," meaning it was done with knowledge that it was "unlawful." Teel and Whitfield did not make unlawful rulings in the cases involving Paul Minor. In fact, they ruled as they should have based on the facts and the law. And under the actual law, here's what matters in an honest-services mail fraud case: That the public actually was "deprived" of a public official's "honest services." There was nothing dishonest about Teel and Whitfield's rulings. In fact, it would have been dishonest for them to rule against Minor's clients in these two cases. So under actual statutory language, the government's case falls apart. I suspect that's why the government used non-statutory, layman's terms in the indictment, and Judge Henry Wingate let them get away with it.

* One final point. Just how perverse is this? Had Teel and Whitfield ruled against Minor's clients in these two cases, ignoring the clear facts and the law, they would have technically been committing honest-services mail fraud. But that would have been fine with the government, and Teel and Whitfield would not be looking at heading to federal prison in December. In other words: The judges could have stayed out of federal prison had they been willing to commit a federal crime. Does that sound nuts? Hey, it's the world we live in under the Bush Justice Department.

Progress in the Paul Minor Case?

The Paul Minor case has a special resonance here at Legal Schnauzer. And word comes today we have reached a landmark on the road to possible justice in a case that can only be described as gruesome.

Attorneys for Minor have filed an appeal in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. We will look at some of the key issues on appeal in a moment. But first, a word about why this case matters so much to us--and why it should matter to all Americans.

Our blog, which recently passed its first birthday, has focused primarily on three cases--two criminal prosecutions in federal court (the Minor case in Mississippi and the Don Siegelman case in Alabama) and one civil case in state court (my own legal travesty in Alabama).

The three cases might not seem to have much in common at first glance. But a common thread runs through them all: They all feature wrongdoing driven by people who are in, or have unusual connections to, the Bush Justice Department.

So what makes the Minor case special here in SchnauzerLand? Several things:

* Until I heard about the Minor case and began researching the issues involved in it, I did not fully understand how badly I had been cheated in my own case. And I did not begin to understand how badly Don Siegelman had been cheated in his case.

* Because of the Minor case, I became aware of, and developed a layman's understanding of, honest-services mail fraud. And that criminal charge is central to all three of our featured cases. In the Minor and Siegelman cases, the charge was improperly applied to help produce convictions that are not remotely grounded in law. In my case, real, honest-to-God honest-service mail fraud is present in copious amounts--and the Bush Justice Department ignores it because the wrongdoing involves "loyal Bushie" Republicans. That's what our justice system has come to over the past seven-plus years: Innocent people are convicted for political reasons and guilty people are not even investigated for political reasons. Praise be to Karl Rove.

* The Minor case has a personal element that illustrates the monstrous nature of some people connected to the Bush Justice Department. Paul Minor's wife is dying of cancer, but he has been held in federal prison pending appeal. Minor's codefendants, former Mississippi state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield, have significant health issues of their own or in their immediate families. And yet, they too are being held in federal prison pending appeal. Now I can hear some folks calling me a "bleeding heart" for suggesting that the Minor defendants should receive consideration because of family health matters. And that certainly is part of my argument. But when you study the transcript and the case law as I have, you see that these gentlemen are innocent--and never should have been prosecuted, much less imprisoned. That's what makes certain Bushies--prosecutor Dunn Lampton and Judge Henry Wingate, in this case--particularly monstrous.

* Don Siegelman has been released pending appeal, and that is a sign of hope for folks who care about justice. But the plight of the Minor defendants should remind us: The spirit of Josef Stalin still lives in George W. Bush's America. And to think that Dubya never would have come close to winning the White House without the "Christian" vote. Makes you wonder what's going on in our churches.

What about the Minor appeal itself? Joe Doss, an Episcopal Bishop and friend/supporter of Paul Minor and his codefendants, issued a press release that definitely is worth reading in its entirety--not only for the legal points it makes but for the moral outrage it expresses:

Free America's Political Prisoners
For Immediate Release
June 20, 2008
Contact: Bishop Joe Doss
Bishop.Doss@gmail.com

Paul Minor Appeals Unjust Conviction
Minor seeks release on bond with wife's death imminent

Attorneys for Paul Minor have filed an appeal of his conviction with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The brief outlines the following issues that warrant reversal of Mr. Minor's conviction:

* The District Court committed reversible error when it did not properly instruct the jury on the legal requirements for a bribery conviction, thus permitting the jury to convict Mr. Minor for conduct that was neither charged in the indictment nor considered bribery under federal law.

* The District Court committed reversible error when it prevented Mr. Minor from presenting crucial, relevant evidence that would have rebutted the charges. Specifically, Mr. Minor--charged for attempting to bribe Judge Whitfield--was not allowed to show the jury that he did not file his more significant cases in Judge Whitfield's court.

* The District court committed reversible error by not dismissing bribery charges against Mr. Minor because the evidence did not meet threshold of the federal bribery statute and the jury was improperly instructed on this fact.

Statement of Bishop Joe Doss of Free America's Political Prisoners:

It should be abhorrent to every American citizen that a man is forced to remain in prison while--as his appeal brief so clearly shows--there are glaring questions surrounding how this case was investigated, prosecuted and tried.

Paul Minor carries the additional burden of knowing that his wife is dying of cancer and has been given only a short time to live. His unjust incarceration makes it very likely that he will never see her again. Paul's release on bond pending appeal is not only legally justified, but considering the imminent death of his wife Sylvia, it is mandated if this process is to salvage a scintilla of basic human decency.

It stands in direct contrast to everything that this country professes to stand for that Paul Minor has not been allowed to remain free on appeal while the prosecutor who brought the bogus charges against him is himself currently under investigation by the U.S. Congress and the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Department of Justice.

The fact that the prosecutor and his office are being investigated about the origins of this prosecution raises more than enough doubt about the conviction to warrant Paul Minor's immediate release pending a thorough hearing on the legality of the prosecution and the ultimate hearing of Mr. Minor's appeal before the fifth circuit court of appeals.

Demanding Justice in the Paul Minor Case

Lawyers for Paul Minor are asking the Obama Justice Department to intervene in the Mississippi attorney's case.

In a letter due to be sent early this week, attorney Hiram Eastland asks Attorney General Eric Holder to take steps in the Minor case that are similar to those recently taken in Alaska cases. Holder asked that the case against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) be dismissed and asked that former state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott (both Republicans) be released from federal prison while their cases are reviewed.

Eastland notes that the U.S. Justice Department's Public Integrity Section (PIN), led by William Welch, was involved in the Alaska cases and the Minor case in Mississippi. Minor and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield--all Democrats--remain in federal prison pending rulings from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Prosecutorial misconduct in the Minor case was worse than those in other cases that have been reviewed, Eastland writes:

What has emerged in recent months is a troubling pattern and practice on the part of the Criminal Division under the direction of William Welch to allow ground level prosecutors to overreach in their legal theories, use questionable tactics to obtain evidence, and mislead, withhold, and manipulate trial material in order to further blatantly improper prosecutions.

Such has been seen in the Ted Stevens, Georgia Thompson, and Cyril Wecht cases--cases in which the Department of Justice has seen fit to intervene to correct the improper behavior and tactics of the Criminal Division.

Sadly, in the Minor case--a case with examples more egregious than those upon which your intervention has occurred--men remain in prison denied of their personal freedom while the evidence mounts that their prosecutions were grossly mishandled by DOJ personnel under the watch of William Welch, chief of the criminal division.

Eastland points out that prosecutors in the Minor case, contrary to clear federal law, sought a jury instruction that did not require a quid pro quo (something for something) agreement in order to have a bribery conviction:

In the second trial the Government claimed that it was unnecessary to prove a specific Quid Pro Quo and therefore were able to make reference to the Bribery and Conspiracy charges without showing that there was any specific agreement. In fact in 2003 the Government admitted that they did not have any evidence of a Quid Pro Quo agreement against Paul Minor yet they still brought the case. Sir, knowing the structure and procedures of the Department of Justice as intimately as you do, you no doubt know that such an overreach in legal theory never would have been allowed to proceed without supervisory support within the Department.

The political nature of the Minor prosecution comes through loud and clear in Eastland's letter:

Mr. Minor was merely one of many attorneys who contributed to judicial campaigns in Mississippi, but was singled out and prosecuted for bribery on the basis of simply having made campaign contributions. There has never been a reasonable explanation offered as to why Paul Minor's campaign contributions were considered a bribe while thousands of others who also contributed in a like-manner were not investigated nor indicted.

In fact there has never been an explanation as to why, in this case, Paul Minor's campaign contributions to these judges were charged as a criminal act, but his campaign contributions to other judges were not.

Did the Minor prosecution dovetail with a Republican election strategy devised by Karl Rove? Yes, indeed:

Evaluating the case though the prism of partisan politics provides a glimpse into the motivation behind the Minor prosecution. The initial indictment against Paul Minor was released on July 25, 2003--14 days before the Primary Election and 102 days before the General Election in Mississippi. The Minor case was immediately seized upon by Republicans and used as campaign tool against then-incumbent Governor Ronnie Musgrove. Direct mail pieces used by the Haley Barbour campaign and the Mississippi Republican Party, linked the Minor case to Governor Musgrove. The vagueness of the charges benefitted the Republicans by stifling contributions from trial lawyers, long a reliable source of funding for the Democrats.

Eastland acknowledges the tough spot in which Holder finds himself. But Minor's attorney says justice demands immediate action from the Department of Justice:

We fully understand that it must be very troubling for you to discover that William Welch, the man entrusted to oversee high profile prosecutions, has engaged in improper if not illegal actions in allowing baseless prosecutions to proceed. However, while you untangle the internal web of misconduct at the Department of Justice, it is reprehensible that men continue to languish in the penal system as a result of Mr. Welch’s malfeasance.

We understand that these are very serious allegations. However, it is abundantly clear that in the Paul Minor case, as in Stevens and Wecht cases, there were egregious violations of the Department of Justice code of conduct for employees and attorneys.

Taking affirmative action in the Minor case has long since superseded the political realm. Direct intervention would provide you with the opportunity to produce a grocery list of malfeasance that would not have the world asking “why” you acted – conversely the production of the facts would beg the question “what took so long?”

Eastland's letter comes on the heels of a Huffington Post article by Brendan DeMelle, stating that justice is long overdue in the Minor case:

It is time for the Obama Justice Department to reverse one of the most egregiously political persecutions of the Bush era -- Paul Minor's bogus conviction on trumped up charges of public corruption "bribery" despite a total lack of evidence that his role as the top funder of Democratic candidates in Mississippi netted him anything other than misery and a harsh prison sentence.

Attorney General Eric Holder stated recently that "elections have consequences." That premise should apply not just to President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court and appointment of new U.S. Attorneys, as Holder mentioned. It should compel a swift review of the unjust prosecutions of prominent Democrats targeted by the Bush Justice Department.

Paul Minor's case is Exhibit A.

Is Rahm Emanuel Providing Cover for Karl Rove and GOP thugs?

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has led efforts to prevent investigations of political prosecutions during the George W. Bush administration, according to a recent Web report.

Brendan DeMelle, at Huffington Post, writes that the Obama administration's decision to turn a blind eye to politicization of the U.S. Justice Department has profound implications for the country--not to mention the victims of political prosecutions, such as Don Siegelman in Alabama, Paul Minor in Mississippi, and Charles Walker in Georgia.

Veteran investigative reporter Wayne Madsen reported earlier this week that it was Emanuel, not former White House Counsel Greg Craig, who nixed support for new trials or investigations in the apparent political prosecutions. From the Wayne Madsen Report (WMR):

WMR has learned from sources close to ousted White House chief counsel Greg Craig that it was not President Obama’s top legal adviser who balked at ordering the Justice Department to review the politically-motivated criminal cases brought by the Bush administration against three top Democrats in the South, but it was White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who made the decision to nix any White House backing for new trials for the southern Democratic officials involved -- former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, former Georgia state Senate leader Charles Walker, and Mississippi attorney Paul Minor.

Walker and Minor are currently incarcerated in federal prisons while Siegelman was freed from prison pending an appeal of his conviction in a trial headed by a corrupt Bush-appointed federal judge and former Republican operative, Mark Fuller.

Madsen says the new information essentially puts Emanuel as providing cover for Karl Rove:

Craig announced his resignation as chief counsel last November. Although press reports indicated that Craig was forced out by Emanuel over Craig’s determination to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison and to release Bush administration Justice Department memos on harsh interrogation techniques, the new information suggests that Craig and Emanuel also differed over Bush-era Justice Department prosecutions of Siegelman, Walker, and Minor, with Craig favoring a Justice Department review of the cases and possible new trials.

The involvement of Emanuel in blocking Justice Department review of the cases against Siegelman, Walker, and Minor is the first evidence that ties Obama’s chief of staff to the continuation of the political prosecutions of a number of Democrats that was brought about largely by President Bush’s top political adviser Karl Rove.

DeMelle, understandably, reacts to the news with a sense of outrage:

With friends like Rahm Emanuel, who needs Karl Rove to destroy the Democrats? Rove is widely reported to have been the mastermind behind the politically-motivated criminal cases brought by the Bush administration against three top Democrats in the South--Paul Minor, Don Siegelman and Charles Walker--and many more nationwide.

Assuming the Wayne Madsen Report is accurate, we now know that Rahm Emanuel is a willing accomplice in that distortion of justice, turning a blind eye to the shameless political prosecutions waged by the Bush administration. Why?

DeMelle also provides an update on the Paul Minor case and what it could mean for America's political system:

Paul Minor, the former Mississippi attorney turned political prisoner, is set to file a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to address the central issue in his case - whether a U.S. citizen can be convicted and imprisoned for donating to a political campaign without the court requiring any evidence of an explicit quid pro quo agreement between the candidate running for elected office and the campaign contributor.

This may be the most important case of the 21st century. If the court decides against Paul Minor, then every U.S. citizen--even corporations, despite the inherent fallacy of corporate personhood-- could be convicted for bribery and thrown in jail simply for donating to a political campaign.

Just let that sink in for a moment. Every single donor--and even the candidates themselves--could be accused, tried, convicted and jailed simply for taking part in democratic elections. This isn't happening in the Soviet Union or a repressive Middle Eastern dictatorship. It is happening right here in the United States, in plain sight, although very few people seem to understand the repercussions given the mainstream media's lack of coverage of Mr. Minor's plight.

Who got in the way of possible justice in the Paul Minor case and other political prosecutions? DeMelle makes that clear:

We now also know that President Obama's top legal advisers were ready and willing to review Paul Minor's case, that is until Rahm Emanuel put his foot down to unilaterally stop the White House from urging the Justice Department to review the case of Paul Minor and the others.

That a chief of staff in a Democratic administration could take such a wrongheaded stance is hard to comprehend. DeMelle outlines the implications for all Americans-including Rahm Emanuel, who might someday learn that he isn't above the fray:

Paul Minor's appeal to the Supreme Court represents an incredibly significant moment in the history of participatory democracy. It is critical for the Supreme Court to enforce the requirement for proof of an explicit quid pro quo in cases involving campaign contributions.

If the Supreme Court Justices provide that clarity by ruling the honest services statute unconstitutionally vague, or even simply enforcing the quid pro quo requirement, then Paul Minor must be freed.

In any event, if the Supreme Court fails to require a clear quid pro quo agreement, then every campaign contributor - citizen and corporation alike - should be concerned about his or her freedom to participate in our democracy. Whether it's an ExxonMobil or U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive, a wealthy trial lawyer, or even Rahm Emanuel, nobody deserves the injustice endured by Paul Minor. Let his be the last partisan political prosecution to tarnish our democracy, and set him free to be with his children.

Mainstream Media Does A Dismal Job Of Reporting On Profound Issues Raised By Paul Minor Appeal

Albert Alschuler

Whenever Alabama winds up near the bottom in a national quality-of-life ranking--and it happens a lot--our citizens tend to exhale and exclaim, "Whew, thank God for Mississippi!"

There's a good reason for that: If Alabama ranks No. 49 in an issue involving, say, health status, education, or justice, you can bet that Mississippi probably ranks No. 50.

I recently discovered a new reason to say, "Thank God for Mississippi!" It didn't seem possible that the mainstream media (MSM) in any state could be worse than ours here in Alabama. But based on last weeks' coverage of the latest appeal in the Paul Minor case, Mississippi appears to "have us beat."

Albert Alschuler, a national expert on legal issues connected to honest-services fraud, filed a brief on December 31 with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of the Minor case in light of the high court's 2010 ruling in a case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling.

The court found in Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010) that the federal honest-services statutes reach only cases of alleged bribery and kickbacks. Skilling was decided after Minor's original petition for certiorari review had been filed. As such, Alschuler argues, it represents "an intervening change in law" that merits review under Supreme Court Rule 10(a).

Paul Minor, one of the most successful plaintiffs' attorneys in Mississippi history, was convicted on Bush-era corruption charges, along with former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield. Minor and Whitfield remain in federal prison, while Teel was released last year after completing his sentence.

The Minor case was one of the most high-profile federal prosecutions in Mississippi over the past decade. And it raises critical issues about the U.S. election process, including the First Amendment right to financially support the candidates of our choice. But you would never know that from last week's coverage about the Minor appeal in the Mississippi MSM.

First, a reasonable person might expect that Mississippi newspapers would consider the Minor case important enough to assign staff reporters to the latest story. That would seem especially true in Biloxi, where Minor live and worked, and in Jackson, where the trial was conducted. But our research indicates both the Biloxi Sun Herald and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger used a wire report provided by Associated Press.

A reporter named Jack Elliott Jr. wrote the Associated Press story out of Jackson, and he did not distinguish himself with this effort. Perhaps Elliott has done fine work on other stories, and in his defense, news about the Minor appeal was released on December 31--and that means the AP bureau probably had a skeleton crew working on New Year's Eve. Whatever caused it, Elliott's story was a sorry piece of journalism that did almost nothing to help readers understand a case that has national implications.

The incompetence at the Biloxi newspaper started right off the bat, with a headline that read "Minor Appeals Miss. Sentence to US Supreme Court." (The AP writer, by the way, almost certainly did not write that headline; it probably was written by someone on the newspaper's copy desk.) How many ways does that title get it wrong? First, it was a federal sentence, not a state sentence under Mississippi law. More importantly, Minor's brief makes it clear that he is not just appealing his sentence; he is seeking to have his convictions overturned on all counts. (The full brief can be viewed at the end of this post.)

The brief states throughout that the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals holdings on the case merit "summary reversal." That means, according to Minor's counsel, the convictions are unlawful and are due to be overturned. Here is a reference from page 4 of the brief:

Skilling's holding was clear: The law of honest-services fraud does not vary from state to state. The Fifth Circuit's disregard of this holding warrants summary reversal.

Inexplicably, the AP story makes no mention of the ruling in Skilling. The first sentence in the "Statement of the Case" found in Minor's brief states that the appeal is based primarily on a change in the law on honest-services fraud, brought about Skilling.

It's the crux of the entire appeal. Failing to address that is like writing on World War II without mentioning Adolph Hitler. In fact, we see no signs that the AP reporter even looked at the latest Minor brief. His report makes multiple references to "Minor has argued . . ." or "Minor said . . ."; those are apparent references to issues raised in earlier court documents.

It appears Elliott based his story on clips that are several years old and do not address the issues that Alschuler now has placed squarely before the nation's highest court.

Alschuler spends considerable time in his brief on the most important issue in the Minor case--flawed jury instructions. Minor's counsel shows how U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate repeatedly butchered jury instructions in the trial court. And Alschuler lays out tortured arguments on the issue before the Fifth Circuit that are downright comical.

The take-home point is this: Jury instructions in the Minor case were hopelessly wrong before the Skilling ruling was issued; they are even more off target in the post-Skilling environment.

That means the Minor defendants were convicted of "crimes" that do not exist under actual law. It means their convictions are due to be overturned across the board, even without taking Skilling into consideration.

You might think it is important for the public to understand issues that caused three citizens to be imprisoned because of convictions that are not even close to being lawful. You might think the mainstream press in Mississippi would take seriously its obligation to educate readers on matters that go straight to constitutional protections.

But based on Associated Press coverage of the Paul Minor appeal--and the sorry efforts of other reporters and editors in Mississippi--you would be wrong.

Paul Minor-SCOTUS Petition2

Paul Minor's Wife Dies While "Justice" System Dawdles

We just received word that Sylvia Minor, the wife of Bush Justice Department victim Paul Minor, died late yesterday afternoon after a long battle with breast cancer.

Paul Minor is a Mississippi attorney who was wrongfully prosecuted and convicted by the Bush Justice Department in a case with many similarities to the Don Siegelman case in Alabama.

Minor's attorneys had sought an emergency release so their client could be with his wife of 41 years in her last days. But government lawyers filed a 77-page motion opposing the release, claiming that Minor was a threat to the community.

Judges on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals bought that argument and denied the release. Minor's attorneys had filed a request with the Justice Department for an emergency furlough. But any action taken on that request now will come to late.

The Paul Minor case has stunk on a legal level for quite some time. This is just one of many posts we've written that illustrate that.

But now the people who ramrodded the case--primarily U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton and U.S. Judge Henry Wingate--have sunk to a level of human depravity that is hard to comprehend.

Paul Minor was targeted not because he had committed any crimes but because he was a generous supporter of Democratic causes and candidates. He was a particularly strong supporter of John Edwards, who at one time figured to be George W. Bush's main obstacle to re-election in 2004.

That's why Karl Rove and Co. wanted to shut down Paul Minor's financial support. And Lampton and Wingate have to know that. They also have to know that Minor was convicted only because Wingate concocted jury instructions that do not remotely reflect actual law in the case.

Now, Paul Minor's wife has died--and he was not able to be with her. This shows that corruption in the Bush Justice Department hasn't just had legal and financial costs. It's had dreadful human costs, as well.

Will this spark a sense of outrage about the depths our justice system has reached? If it doesn't, our country might be too far gone to save.

U.S. Supreme Court Must Face A Comedy Of Errors In Considering A Review Of The Paul Minor Case

Paul Minor

How entrenched is the rot in our federal judiciary? How grotesque is the corruption and incompetence in U.S. courtrooms?

Those questions perhaps can best be answered by reviewing the Bush-era Paul Minor prosecution in Mississippi. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) now is considering a petition to review the Minor case and overturn the convictions of three men who went to federal prison for crimes they did not commit--in fact, for "crimes" that do not exist under federal law.

A decision on whether to review Paul S. Minor v. United States of America is expected any day from the high court. (The petition for certiorari review can be viewed at the end of this post.) If SCOTUS refuses to review Minor, it will be giving tacit approval to the current dysfunctional state of our federal justice system. The situation is particularly dire in the Fifth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit, which stretch across the Deep South from Florida to Texas.

The Eleventh Circuit (Florida, Georgia, Alabama) is based in Atlanta, and its three-judge panel of right-wing nominees butchered the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The Fifth Circuit (Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) is based in New Orleans, and it performed a similar hatchet job on the Minor case.

Portions of the certiorari brief in Minor describe the Fifth Circuit's actions in almost comedic terms. In fact, the appellate court's handling of the case would be downright laughable--if the stakes were not so high. Two citizens, former attorney Paul Minor and former state judge John Whitfield, currently reside in federal prisons because of convictions that are not supported by fact or law. A third defendant, former state judge Wes Teel, was released in 2012 after serving his sentence. A fourth defendant, former state judge Oliver Diaz, was forced to endure two trials before being acquitted both times.

Here is the gist of Minor's argument before SCOTUS: The bribery convictions already have been overturned, but the Fifth Circuit upheld honest-services fraud convictions; that ruling was incorrect based on the trial-court record, but it becomes doubly wrong in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in a 2010 case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling. The high court found in Skilling that the honest-services statute applies only in cases involving bribes and kickbacks. The high court also used Skilling to establish a uniform national standard for honest-services fraud.

And that brings us to one of many oddities in Minor. At the time the case went to trial, the federal circuits were divided on the role alleged state-law violations play in prosecutions under the honest-services statute. In the Fifth Circuit, proof of a state-law violation was an indispensable element of the crime, under a case styled U.S. v. Brumley, 116 F. 3d 728 (5th Cir., 1997). In other circuits state law was irrelevant.

That was a problem because state bribery laws, for example, vary wildly. In fact, they vary wildly just among the three states that make up the Fifth Circuit. At the time of the Minor trial, a defendant could be found guilty of a federal crime, based on a state-law violation in Mississippi, while the same behavior would not allow for conviction next door in Louisiana.

One outcome of Skilling is that SCOTUS cleaned up this mess and established a uniform national standard for honest-services violations, drawing on federal statutes and not state laws.

And that is where comedy enters the picture. When Minor was argued before the Fifth Circuit, post Skilling, even the government conceded the new opinion had radically changed the playing field, meaning the trial-court's jury instructions now were incorrect. But the Fifth Circuit upheld the convictions anyway?

Albert Alschuler, the criminal-justice expert who prepared the pending Minor petition, seems baffled by that one. This is from page 5 of the Minor petition for certiorari:

The Fifth Circuit's error was especially egregious because the government expressly and repeatedly waived any claim that the district court's instructions were correct. Prior to Skilling, Minor sought interlocutory review of a Fifth Circuit decision affirming some of his convictions and reversing others. After he filed his petition but before the government responded, this Court decided Skilling. Citing Skilling, the government then declared, "The [district] court's reliance on state law was incorrect because the honest-services statute 'establish[es] a uniform national standard.'"

The government went on to acknowledge that the instructional error was "plain." But that still was not enough for the Fifth Circuit to overturn clearly wrongful convictions. Alschuler adds this in his brief, perhaps to drive home the absurdity:

The government made the same concession in its brief to the Fifth Circuit. It did so again in oral argument, even after a panel member declared that she was "sort of appalled" by the government's concession.

Yes, a member of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said she was "sort of appalled" because the government admitted a point of law that was beyond dispute. That's what passes for "jurisprudence" in postmodern federal courts.

The jury instructions at the Minor trial were hopelessly incorrect, on multiple grounds, long before Skilling came down. But the latest standard makes them even more wildly off target.

How goofy were the Minor jury instructions? The current petition before SCOTUS shines considerable light on that question. And that's where the comedy of errors continues.

(To be continued)

Paul Minor-SCOTUS Petition2 by Roger Shuler

Will Paul Minor Receive an Emergency Release From Prison?

Is there any humanity left in our justice system?

Perhaps we will find out in a few days in the wake of a motion seeking emergency release of Mississippi attorney Paul Minor. The motion and an excellent update on the Minor case are available through a report at Huffington Post by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle.

Sylvia Minor, Paul's wife of 41 years, is dying of brain cancer. The motion before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals asks for Paul Minor's release so that he can be with his wife in her final days.

Minor is serving an 11-year sentence on bribery charges that were trumped up by the Bush Justice Department. He and two codefendants, former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield, were convicted only because of outrageous and unlawful rulings by U.S. Judge Henry Wingate (a Ronald Reagan appointee).

Here is one of many posts we have written about prosecutorial and judicial corruption in the Minor case.

For the moment, though, the Minor case is not about facts and the law; it is about humanity, which seems to be lacking in our justice system. Kennedy and DeMelle write:

Minor's wife of 41 years, Sylvia, is dying of terminal brain cancer and her moments of clarity are dwindling. Her oncologist issued a statement over the weekend at the request of her family noting that Mrs. Minor's "demise is imminent.... Mrs. Minor requests the presence of her husband during this last part of her life... it is urgent that this occur immediately due to her rapidly deteriorating condition."

Minor, however, does have the facts and law on his side:

Minor is legally entitled to release on bail from the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp where he has spent the last two-and-a-half years. His attorneys have successfully raised "substantial questions" about Minor's conviction, the key legal test which requires the defendant's release on bond pending the outcome of an appeal. The tough questions asked of the DOJ attorney by the panel of judges hearing Minor's appeal last week make clear the fact that these judges appear to have their own "substantial questions" about the Justice Department's prosecution of Mr. Minor for bribery.

Kennedy and DeMelle draw solid parallels between the Minor situation and the Don Siegelman case in Alabama:

In March of last year, the 11th Circuit on virtually identical issues found that former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, another Rove victim, had established substantial questions about the correctness of his prosecution and was therefore entitled to release pending appeal. Given this decision, it would raise grave suspicions if the 5th Circuit now denied the release of Paul Minor.

Paul Minor and the U.S. Supreme Court's "Corporation" Ruling

Want evidence that our justice system is broken at multiple levels? Consider the Paul Minor case in Mississippi now that we have Citizens United v. FEC, the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates for corporate money to flow into our political system.

Here at Legal Schnauzer, we've known for a long time that the Minor case is a travesty, with prosecutors gaining convictions only because a corrupt federal judge issued bogus jury instructions. And the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently muddied the waters by throwing out the convictions on bribery but maintaining the ones for fraud.

Minor's attorneys have filed a motion for reconsideration with the Fifth Circuit. The motion should be granted posthaste, particularly now that the nation's highest court has essentially endorsed what Paul Minor was alleged to have done.

The crux of the prosecution's case against Minor was that the Gulf Coast attorney provided favors for state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield in exchange for favorable rulings. But now we have the U.S. Supreme Court essentially saying that, even if the charges against Minor were true, his actions are protected by the First Amendment.

In other words, Minor was convicted for doing what our system encourages him to do.

The irony of the Citizens United ruling was not lost on Abbe Lowell, one of Minor's attorneys. In fact, Lowell supplemented Minor's motion for reconsideration with new argument based on Citizens United. In a letter to the clerk of the Fifth Circuit, Lowell states:

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(j), Paul Minor notifies the Court of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC, No. 08-205 (Jan. 21, 2010). That decision clarifies that the jury instructions in this case, which allowed the jury to convict the defendants of honest services fraud for campaign contributions made with only an intent to influence and without any quid pro quo, violate the First Amendment.

Minor already had an overwhelmingly strong appeal. But now the John Roberts-led U.S. Supreme Court has stepped in to essentially say that trial judge Henry Wingate's jury instructions violated Minor's First Amendment rights.

Moral of the story: What right-wing judges giveth, right-wing judges can taketh away.

Here is Lowell's full letter to the Fifth Circuit. He's essentially telling the Fifth Circuit, "We know you got it wrong, and now the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with us." Touche:

Mr. Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk of Court
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
600 S. Maestri Place
New Orleans, LA 70130-3408


Re: United States v. Paul S. Minor, No. 07-60751


Case Argued on April 1, 2009 Before Judges Garwood,
Benavides and Haynes


Dear Mr. Fulbruge:


Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(j), Paul Minor notifies the Court of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC, No. 08-205 (Jan. 21, 2010). That decision clarifies that the jury instructions in this case, which allowed the jury to convict the defendants of honest services fraud for campaign contributions made with only an intent to influence and without any quid pro quo, violate the First Amendment. In the context of campaign contributions, the Court held that the government's interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption, is limited to quid pro quo corruption. (Slip op. at 43.) The fact that speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt: Favoritism and influence are not . . . avoidable in representative politics . . . . It is well understood that a substantial and legitimate reason, if not the only reason, to cast a vote for, or to make a contribution to one candidate over another is that the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes the supporter favors. Id. at 43-44 (quoting McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003) (Kennedy, J., concurring and dissenting)). Reliance on a generic favoritism or influence theory . . . is at odds with standard First Amendment analyses because it is unbounded and susceptible to no limiting principle. (Id. at 44.) Ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption. (Id. at 45.)

The jury instructions in this case allowed Mr. Minor to be convicted for making campaign contributions with the intent to influence official actions by the judges he supported, without their being a quid pro quo, and even if the jury found the judges rulings legal and correct. In doing so, the instructions transformed protected First Amendment contributions made to influence elected officials to follow their judgment, rather than betray it, into a crime. That is constitutional error of the greatest magnitude, which requires the honest services convictions be reversed as part of the pending proceedings before this Court.


Respectfully submitted,


Abbe David Lowell

U.S. Supreme Court's Reputation Sinks Into Toilet With Its Refusal To Review Paul Minor Convictions

Paul Minor

The U.S. Supreme Court announced last week that it would not grant certiorari review in the case of Paul Minor, a former trial lawyer from Mississippi. Citizens who closely followed the Bush v. Gore debacle after the 2000 presidential election already know the high court's reputation is in tatters. Any doubters ought to be convinced by the refusal to consider the Minor convictions, which probably are due to be overturned on at least a dozen grounds.

No. 1 on the list, for purposes of the SCOTUS petition, was that the high court's ruling in a 2010 case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling means the jury instructions in Minor were incorrect, and the convictions no longer rest on good law.

Minor's legal team, led by criminal-justice expert Albert Alschuler, makes a powerful argument to that effect in a 237-page petition filed with the high court. (The full petition can be viewed at the end of this post.) There can be no serious debate that Alschuler is correct, and here is why: Minor and two codefendants--former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield--were tried under the federal honest-services fraud statute and convicted on alleged violations of Mississippi state bribery law. But SCOTUS used Skilling v. U.S., 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010) to establish a uniform national standard in honest-services cases and found that they must be grounded in federal law, not state laws.

Even the government has conceded in briefs and oral arguments that Skilling made the jury instructions in Minor incorrect, and that means the argument for overturning the convictions is about as close to cut and dried as the Supreme Court will ever find. So why did the justices refuse to hear the case? The message to the public seems to be this: "Even though this case was decided by bad law, and both sides agree on that, we simply can't be bothered with it. Next."

Is it any wonder that many Americans have lost faith in once-exalted institutions?

If the rule of law still meant anything in the US of A, the Minor convictions would be overturned on the Skilling issue alone. But Alschuler's petition for certiorari review provides alarming evidence that problems with the Minor case go way beyond that. That evidence reaches the level of frightening when you consider that Whitfield remains in federal prison, and Minor soon will be sent from a Pensacola prison to a halfway house in New Orleans to carry out his term. Teel was released in 2012 after completing his sentence.

Courts that are riddled with corruption and incompetence have ugly consequences for real Americans. Paul Minor, Wes Teel, and John Whitfield have received a graduate education in that fact of postmodern life.

Were these gentlemen convicted in a trial court that was fair, impartial, and firmly grounded in the law? Upon reading Alschuler's petition, a reasonable person can only respond, "Hell, no!" The U.S. Supreme Court, of course, apparently could not be bothered to read the petition.

The most shocking revelations come in pages 8-11, where Alschuler addresses the instructions that U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate gave the jury.

First, Alschuler points out that the instructions included the following language:

. . . you can fix it in your mind that when you see honest services, that you know we are talking about an alleged violation of the bribery laws of the State of Mississippi.

We now know that Skilling made that language an inaccurate statement of the law. In essence, the U.S. Supreme Court's own actions, in Skilling, made those words outdated and unlawful. Will the high court fix the problem on behalf of the Minor defendants--and other citizens who might someday find themselves convicted based on bad law? Nope.

Problems with the jury instructions in Minor go way beyond Skilling-related issues. Alschuler drives that home with this:

The instructions continued, "[T]he government must prove . . . that the particular defendant entered into a corrupt agreement for Paul S. Minor to provide the particular judge with things of value specifically with the intent to influence the action or judgment of the judge. . . ." They added, "To constitute the offense of offering a bribe, there need not be a mutual intent on the part of both the giver and the offeree or accepter of the bribe."

That language is likely to leave even a highly educated person scratching his head. One can only wonder how it affected the average federal juror in Mississippi. To put it bluntly, the instruction makes no frickin' sense--and Alschuler points that out with this not-so-subtle statement:

The court made no effort to reconcile its statement that an agreement was necessary with its statement that no mutual intent was required.

How do two people reach an agreement without having mutual intent? God only knows. But we send citizens to prison based on jury instructions such as these. And we have appellate courts and a Supreme Court that let it happen.

In a rare example of a lawyer communicating candidly about the ineptness of a federal court, Alschuler writes on page 26 of his petition:

". . . the district court's direction was cast in extraordinarily confusing language. It is virtually impossible to divine the instruction's meaning, but it appears to require an agreement between two people about what one of them will later intend. . . . The jurors could only have thrown up their hands."

No serious individual could argue, either before or after Skilling, that the Paul Minor case was correctly decided; even the government doesn't argue that. And yet, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the honest-services convictions, and the U.S. Supreme Court washed its hands of the matter. It all is one more sign that Americans should have no confidence in their justice system.

SCOTUS, in essence, is sending this message: "Welcome to the 'wild, wild West' of American justice. It's the environment we have, and it now bears our stamp of approval. If some of you decide to take matters of justice into your own hands, have at it--and good luck."

Paul Minor-SCOTUS Petition2 by Roger Shuler

Judge In Paul Minor Case Continues His Evil Ways

Paul Minor

The biggest problems with our justice system involve people, not process. Every now and then, I will discover an element of the law--something from the codes, statutes, procedures, cases--that I take issue with. But for the most part, the actual law makes sense, at least to me. Our system has become a sewer because of the people--lawyers; judges; even clerks, in some cases--who are supposed to apply the law, but instead act in a corrupt fashion.

That's not to say, however, that the system itself doesn't have some perverse qualities. And two of them are on display this week in the Paul Minor case in Mississippi.

Minor, a plaintiff's lawyer known for successfully taking on corporate interests, was convicted on federal corruption charges in April 2007. Wes Teel and John Whitfield, two former state judges, also were convicted in the case, and the men have spent the past three-plus years in federal prison. The Minor story has been a companion case to the Don Siegelman saga in Alabama, two clear examples of political prosecutions during the George W. Bush era.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the bribery convictions in the Minor case and sent it back to the trial court for reconsideration, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's narrowed definition of honest-services fraud in a case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling.

Attorneys for the Minor defendants filed a motion to vacate the convictions, and given the actions of higher courts, you would think that might have been a chance for U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate to finally get something right. But you would be wrong.

Wingate ruled yesterday that he is returning Minor, Teel, and Whitfield to prison. The three men had asked to be sentenced to time served, a profoundly reasonable request considering that public documents show they never committed a crime in the first place. But Wingate denied the request. He reduced Minor's 11-year sentence to eight years and reduced Teel's sentence by 22 months and Whitfield's by 19 months.

How absurd is this? Consider this from one of our recent posts about the Minor case:

We've shown through probably 100-plus posts here at Legal Schnauzer that Minor, Teel, and Whitfield indeed were convicted for actions that are not criminal--and it was not even a close call, just as in the Siegelman case in Alabama. What was the gist of the charges? Minor had provided loan guarantees to the state judges, which was legal under Mississippi law. The judges later made rulings that were favorable to Minor's clients, and the government contended that was proof of corrupt acts--that Minor received the rulings in exchange for the loan guarantees.

There were several problems, however, with the government's case. One, there was no testimony or evidence that a quid pro quo agreement existed between Minor and the judges. Second, a review of the cases in question show clearly that the judges ruled correctly, based on the facts and law before them. In other words, Minor's clients prevailed because they deserved to prevail--not because of any hanky panky behind the scenes. Expert witnesses were prepared to testify to this effect at trial, but Wingate did not allow it. In essence, the Minor defendants were not allowed to put on a defense, and Wingate's jury instructions simply were concocted from the bench, having little to do with actual relevant law.

Folks who are interested in background on the Minor case might want to check out these two posts:

An Inside Look at the Dirty Work of Federal Prosecutors in the Age of Bush


Josef Stalin's Spirit Lives On Through the Paul Minor Case in Mississippi


As for newer material, get a load of this report last week in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate heard arguments on the defense motions but said if there were an error in the judicial bribery trial, it was harmless.

"The jury found facts establishing guilt," Wingate said.

Errors that caused three innocent men to be sent to federal prison are "harmless"? And how did the jury manage to find facts that established guilt? Why, Wingate gave them jury instructions that were not remotely correct under the law.

How screwy were Wingate's jury instructions? We've addressed that in a previous post. Here was a key portion of Wingate's instruction:

"You may find specific criminal intent even though you may find that the rulings were legal and correct, that the official conduct would have been done anyway, that the official conduct sought to be influenced was lawful and required by law, and that the official conduct was desirable or beneficial to the public welfare."

You can search law books until your fingers bleed, and you will not find that description of bribery or honest-services fraud. That's because it doesn't exist. Henry Wingate made it up, and the Minor defendants were convicted for a "crime" that is a figment of a judge's imagination.

What about those perverse qualities that are built into our "justice" system? Here are two big ones:

(1) A judge gets a second chance to screw up--When an appellate court finds an error at the trial-court level, it returns the case to the same judge who likely is responsible for the screw up in the first place. Does that make a lick of sense? Of course not. In the Minor case, the Fifth Circuit, in essence, found, "Judge Wingate, you screwed this up." So what did the Fifth Circuit do? It sent the case right back to Judge Wingate, who now is pissed off because he's been reversed. Works out real well for the defendants, especially those who were convicted based on jury instructions that describe a "crime" that does not exist under the law.

(2) The value of remorse--One way to get a sentence reduced is to go in front of a judge and act contrite about having broken the law. But what if you didn't break the law? What if the actual law was not even presented to the jury that convicted you? What if you know all of that? You are supposed to be remorseful about something you didn't do?

That, too, is at play in the Minor case. Consider this from a story about Wingate's most recent ruling:

The government had initially requested maximum sentences for the three men. Wingate said he would not do that, resentencing all three to terms that were less that those suggested in federal sentencing guidelines.

Wingate said he impressed by the contrition shown by the three. “You have with you conduct earned a reduction” in the sentence, Wingate said.

The Minor defendants, understandably, are desperate to get out of prison. And they know how the game is played, so they are apologizing for "crimes" they did not commit.

That's all part of the "theater" involved in our justice system. And it can't get much more perverse than what we are seeing in the Paul Minor case.

Mississippi Churning, Part XXIII

Paul Minor and Dunn Lampton have been political adversaries for many years. In fact, their relationship sounds strikingly similar to that of Judge Mark Fuller and Don Siegelman in Alabama, which was presented in stark detail recently in an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Benton Weeks.

If anything, the Minor/Lampton relationship might be even more contentious than the Siegelman/Fuller pairing.

Before becoming a U.S. attorney, Lampton ran twice as a Republican for the U.S. Congress. Both times he lost, and both times his races were financed largely by companies that Minor had successfully sued. Included among these companies were firms owned or operated by members of Lampton's family.

Here is background on the history between Paul Minor and Dunn Lampton, pulled from public documents:

* Leslie B. Lampton is director, CEO, and chairman of the board of Ergon Inc., a Mississippi corporation that was No. 180 on the Forbes list of 500 top private U.S. corporations for the year 2003. Leslie Lampton is a relative of Dunn Lampton, and those closely connected to Ergon include Lee C. Lampton, William W. Lampton, and Robert H. Lampton. All made contributions to Dunn Lampton's political campaigns.

* Paul Minor successfully sued Ergon and recovered, or was awarded damages on behalf of his clients, in the millions of dollars. In July 2002, as the investigation in the Minor case was heating up, Minor entered an appearance for plaintiffs in a case against Ergon and one of its subsidiaries, Magnolia Towing, and was successful in having the litigation transferred to Oklahoma, where the matter settled for millions of dollars.

* During his campaigns for Congress, Lampton received campaign contributions from current Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, then a professional lobbyist for Lorillard Tobacco Company. Lorillard is part of Loews Corporation, which owns 54 percent of Diamond Offshore Drilling. Diamond Offshore was the defendant in the Archie Marks case, in which Paul Minor represented the plaintiff.

* Lampton received a campaign contribution from Deloitte & Touche Federal PAC, an independent accounting firm that was employed by Diamond Offshore.

* Lampton received campaign contributions from Brown and Williamson Tobacco. Minor was a trial lawyer in lawsuits against tobacco companies and was awarded millions of dollars in attorney fees for his efforts in the litigation.

Think Lampton might salivate at the thought of Paul Minor being in prison? Think Lampton would uphold the public trust a prosecutor holds (as outlined here by Scott Horton of Harper's) in a case involving Paul Minor?

Is the Obama DOJ Practicing Deceit in the Paul Minor Case?

The Barack Obama administration hardly has distinguished itself on matters of justice. With the latest news from the Paul Minor case in Mississippi, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be clueless and perhaps downright deceitful.

A report in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger indicates something still is seriously wrong with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of Mississippi, even though it now is led on an interim basis by Obama appointee Don Burkhalter. Writes reporter Jimmie E. Gates:

Officials in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of Mississippi have repeatedly said the office removed itself from the case of former Gulf Coast attorney Paul Minor and two former judges.
But last week, Ruth Morgan of Gulfport, an assistant U.S. attorney in that office, argued in court papers that former Chancery Judge Wes Teel should remain in prison until he is resentenced.

What gives? The office claims to have recused itself, but one of its attorneys clearly remains on the case. Is someone out of touch with reality on the Mississippi Coast? One legal observer in the state seems to think the answer is yes.

Philip W. Thomas, at MS Litigation Review, gets right to the point in a post titled "Burkhalter Looks Horrible in Paul Minor Recusal Flap." Writes Thomas:

For the life of me I can’t figure out why interim U.S. Attorney Don Burkhalter says that his office has recused itself from the Paul Minor judicial bribery case when it's clearly not true. Here is the relevant paragraph from Thursday’s Clarion-Ledger article on the subject:

But interim U.S. Attorney Don Burkhalter of the Southern District said his office is indeed recused from the case, with the exception of two attorneys. He said [Ruth] Morgan and Dave Fulcher are working with the Department of Justice on court filings in the trio's appeal, but he is not involved.

Talk about disgusting. Here you have an Obama appointee sounding just like George W. Bush appointee Leura Canary in the Middle District of Alabama. Canary, of course, claimed to have recused herself in the Don Siegelman case, only to turn it over to two of her lieutenants, Steve Feaga and Louis Franklin. Thanks to DOJ whistleblower Tamarah Grimes in Montgomery, Alabama, we now know that Canary didn't even recuse herself. Thomas isn't buying Burkhalter's nonsensical explanations:

Not knowing to quit when he is behind, Burkhalter digs his hole deeper:

"You don't see my signature on the motion," Burkhalter said.

If you don’t personally sign it then your office is not working on it? You know that is untrue don’t you? Since you are the U.S. Attorney, if anyone who works in the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s office—which includes Morgan and Fulcher—is working on it, then your office is working on it.

Federal public defender George Lucas’ comment is dead-on:

"It appears their perception of a recusal is different than mine."

I would add that their perception of recusal is different from anyone’s living in reality.

Burhalter is playing word games that make him look like a liar. Morgan and Fulcher are assistant U.S. Attorneys in Burkhalter’s office. If they are working on the case, then the office has not recused itself from the case.

Thomas goes on to point out the absurdity in Burkhalter's statements:

Saying that the office is recused—except for the two lawyers who have been assigned to the case—is a bizarre word game that reinforces negative stereotypes about politicians and lawyers. Most people would simply call it a lie. It would be like saying: “I don’t steal—except on Fridays.” The qualifier negates the statement.

Hiram Eastland, an attorney for Paul Minor, issued a statement about the shenanigans that are still going on in the DOJ:

The prosecution of Paul Minor was flawed from the beginning and reeked of political motivations as evidenced by this case being flagged by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives in 2007 as one of the most glaring examples of prosecutorial misconduct by the Department of Justice.

Off and on throughout this case the U.S. Attorney's office has maintained it has recused itself from the case when it clearly has not. Recusal is a seminal issue in this case simply because–as we have seen from some charges being overturned and the fifth circuit repeatedly questioning key points in the case by requesting re-briefings on the matters–that an objective US Attorney’s office without agenda, would not have proceeded with such an obviously flawed case.

So, the case progresses, the US Attorney’s Office continues to flip-flop on the recusal issue, the appellate court has overturned the main charge that served as the underpinning of the entire prosecution, and yet Paul Minor begins his fourth year in prison.

Do Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, plan to sleepwalk for four years on justice issues? It's starting to look that way. Perhaps a few more electoral results like the one in Massachusetts will wake them up. By then, of course, it might be too late for this administration to accomplish much of anything.

You can check out Hiran Eastland's full statement below:

Paul Minor--Hiram Eastland Statement

Democratic Underground Connects the Dots

The Hissyspit journal at Democratic Underground has a detailed piece today about the Paul Minor and Don Siegelman cases and how they connect to my own story here at Legal Schnauzer.

In a sense, the DU story is about the modern Republican Party and its lack of regard for the rule of law. But perhaps the more important angle is this: the modern Republican Party and its utter lack of humanity.

The wife of Mississippi attorney Paul Minor has brain cancer, and her condition is reportedly deteriorating. Meanwhile, her husband is in a federal prison in Florida for crimes he clearly did not commit.

We feel confident in making that statement because we have written a series of 25 posts that show the Minor case was wrongly decided, thanks largely to the corrupt actions of federal judge Henry Wingate, a Reagan appointee. The Hissyspit piece references much of our work in the "Mississippi Churning" series. You can review the entire series here.

Paul Minor, and former Mississippi state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield, are true political prisoners. Minor's clients received favorable rulings in cases before Teel and Whitfield because the law and facts were on their side. Teel and Whitfield ruled correctly under the law, and there is no evidence that their rulings were unlawfully influenced by the fact that Minor had guaranteed loans for their campaigns, which is legal under Mississippi law.

In short, Minor, Teel, and Whitfield all did their jobs. And for that, they wound up in federal prison.

By the way, Wes Teel's wife also has serious health problems. And Teel himself had a heart attack not long after reporting to federal prison in December 2007.

Under the circumstances, I think most caring people would have sympathy for the Minor defendants even if they were guilty of the charges against them. But given that all three defendants clearly were not guilty--that they were railroaded by a corrupt federal judge and a prosecutor who had seen his family business successfully sued by Paul Minor--it's stunning that the case has generated so little attention--or outrage.

Think about Paul Minor, Wes Teel, John Whitfield and their families the next time you hear a Republican talk about God and Christianity. Think about them the next time you hear a Republican say, "Character counts."

Yes, character does count. And the Paul Minor case speaks volumes about the true character of the modern Republican Party.

Mississippi Attorney Paul Minor Gets A Second Crack At An Appeal Before The U.S. Supreme Court

Paul Minor

Paul Minor, the Mississippi lawyer who is in federal prison from a Bush-era prosecution that closely mirrors that of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, has filed a second petition to have his appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. (See a copy of the petition at the end of this post.)

The nation's highest court declined to hear Minor's initial petition for certiorari review in 2010. But that petition came before the court's ruling in a case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling, redefining the federal law on honest-services fraud.

In Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010), the court established a "uniform national standard" for honest-services fraud, and it includes only cases that involve kickbacks and bribes under federal law. Minor and two codefendants, former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield, were convicted under jury instructions that said the right to honest services is defined by Mississippi bribery law.

The Minor defendants filed motions with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to have their convictions overturned because Skilling represented "an intervening change of law that rendered the indictment and jury instructions erroneous." The Fifth Circuit denied those motions in August 2012, and Minor now appeals that ruling.

Minor and Wingate remain in prison after being sentenced in September 2007. Teel was released after completing his sentence in 2012.

Minor's second petition to the high court is governed by Supreme Court Rule 10(a), which holds that certiorari review is appropriate when a court of appeals has "so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings . . . as to call for an exercise of this Court's supervisory power."

Albert Alschuler, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School, represents Minor in the current appeal. Alschuler is the author of a friend-of-the-court brief the Supreme Court cited favorably in Skilling.

Minor's new brief argues that the Fifth Circuit, in failing to overturn his conviction, failed to abide by the controlling authority of the Supreme Court's finding in the Skilling case:

Skilling's holding was clear: The law of honest-services fraud does not vary from state to state. The Fifth Circuit's disregard of this holding warrants summary reversal. . . . 

The Fifth Circuit's contradiction of Skilling will produce serious inequalities in the application of federal law. State bribery laws differ substantially from one another, both nationally and within the circuit. The Fifth Circuit not only has upheld honest-services instructions grounded on state bribery law; relying on its decision in this case, it also has held honest-services instructions based on federal bribery law erroneous. . . .  

In light of both of these rulings, courts within the circuit will ground honest-services instructions on state law until the Court corrects the error. No other circuit has suggested that state law still defines the right to honest services after Skilling.

Here is a copy of Paul Minor's second petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court:

Paul Minor-SCOTUS Petition2

Paul Minor Is Not Allowed to Attend His Wife's Funeral

Sylvia Minor's funeral was on Friday in New Orleans. Her husband of 41 years, Mississippi attorney Paul Minor, was not allowed to attend.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons ruled that Minor could not be released. And the U.S. Department of Justice refused to intervene.

Minor is in federal prison on corruption charges similar to those brought against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Like Siegelman, Minor is a Democrat who was the victim of a political prosecution carried out by the Bush Justice Department.

A highly successful plaintiff's attorney, Minor was a generous supporter of Democratic Party causes and candidates. Minor was one of the largest contributors to the presidential campaign of John Edwards, who once was considered to be the biggest threat to George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.

In a 25-part series called "Mississippi Churning," we have shown on this blog that Minor was the victim of a bogus prosecution brought by U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, a George W. Bush appointee. Larisa Alexandrovna at Raw Story and Scott Horton at Harper's magazine also have written extensively about the case.

Minor and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield were convicted only because of a series of unlawful rulings by U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, a Ronald Reagan appointee.

In all, we probably have written close to 100 posts about the Minor case. Why has the case attracted our attention? In our view, it's probably the most blatant of all the political prosecutions under the Bush DOJ.

Siegelman was the victim of a bogus prosecution, but some of the underlying actions in that case happened out of public view, behind closed doors. The corruption on the part of prosecutors is somewhat obscured. And Judge Mark Fuller at least tried to come close on his unlawful jury instructions.

In the Minor case, the corruption of our justice system is plain for anyone who cares to look. The two underlying lawsuits, in which Minor was alleged to have bribed judges in return for favorable results, are matters of public record. And the record shows they were decided correctly, under the law, so there can be no "corrupt act" required for a bribery conviction. And the public was not actually deprived of anyone's honest services, a requirement for a fraud conviction in the case.

As for Judge Henry Wingate, he made no effort to hide the fact that he was giving bogus jury instructions and making other unlawful rulings, essentially denying Minor & Co. an opportunity to defend themselves. In fact, Wingate's jury instructions were pretty much the opposite of what the law actually says, meaning that Minor and his codefendants were convicted for offenses that do not exist--except in Henry Wingate's warped mind.

So much for that old canard about the United States being "a nation of laws, not of men."

That Paul Minor could have been convicted under such circumstances is mind blowing. That he was denied an opportunity to attend his wife's funeral is inhumane. Reports Associated Press:

The denial capped weeks of legal maneuvering through the courts, prison system and U.S. Justice Department for Minor to get out of prison to be with his wife in her last days. After her death from brain cancer Monday, Minor sought a pass to attend the funeral.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons denied the request apparently because Minor had already been allowed a brief visit in February, but Minor's attorney wrote an urgent letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to intervene. Holder replied in an e-mail to attorney Hiram Eastland Jr. late Thursday that Minor wouldn't be allowed to go.

Holder apparently determined that he was powerless to intervene in the case:

"I do not in any way fault the attorney general or the Justice Department for this denial," Eastland said.

He said Holder and the agency brought "this entire bizarre issue front and center with the Bureau of Prisons."

"The Bureau of Prisons, however, would not budge and based their denial on an antiquated, Draconian, anti-family policy of forcing a prisoner to choose between being with their wife while they are dying or after they have already passed away," he said.

Federal Judge Henry Wingate Doesn't Make An Effort To Apply The Law Correctly In Paul Minor Civil Case

U.S. Judge Henry Wingate

Paul Minor, one of the most successful plaintiffs' lawyers in Mississippi history, has been released from prison on his Bush-era conviction for "crimes" that do not exist under actual law. Minor's legal problems, however, are far from over. With U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate still in charge of his fate, things could go from bad to worse for Paul Minor.

How could Wingate, a black Republican who apparently qualifies as Mississippi's version of Clarence Thomas, still be in charge of Minor's fate? After all, Wingate presided over multiple criminal trials in the Minor matter; how could he possibly serve as an impartial arbiter in a related civil matter?

The answer is, "He can't, but he's doing it anyway--in what's left of our so-called U.S. justice system."

As part of the fallout from the criminal case, insurance giant USF&G sued Minor and his one-time client, Peoples Bank of Biloxi, Mississippi. The basic claim is that Minor and the bank benefited from actions that were found to be unlawful. The civil case was filed in 2003, but it was put on hold pending the criminal matter. When Minor was released from prison earlier this year, the civil case kicked into high gear.

A reasonable citizen might ask, "How could the same judge hear both cases? He's heard the evidence, he's issued orders on various matters . . . how could he possibly be an impartial arbiter in the civil matter when he's already ruled on pretty much the same issues in the criminal matter?"

Under the law, such a citizen is asking all of the right questions. Per 28 U.S. Code 455, a federal judge must disqualify himself in "any proceeding where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." That means Wingate was required by law to step down from the Minor civil case, without being asked. But so far, the judge has resisted all of Minor's efforts to get him off the case.

Even if Wingate had handled the criminal case in an impeccable manner, he should not be hearing the related civil matter. But Wingate's recalcitrance becomes especially troubling when you consider that he butchered the criminal case in almost every way imaginable.

Here are just two of many posts we've written about the botch job Wingate committed on U.S. v. Minor, et al:


Henry Wingate: Portrait of a Corrupt Judge (January 28, 2008)


Judge In Paul Minor Case Continues His Evil Ways (June 14, 2011)


We are not alone in our critique of Wingate's actions. Columbia University law professor Scott Horton called some of Wingate's rulings in the criminal case "breathtaking" and "unconscionable" in a 2007 article for Harper's.

USF&G's lawyers, from the Jackson, Mississippi, firm of McCraney, Montagnet, Quin & Noble, almost surely know they have no legal basis for the civil claim. They apparently have the judge in their hip pocket, however, so the case is proceeding apace.

Consider just some of the facts and law connected to the criminal case:

* USF&G claims that it was the victim of a fraudulent scheme involving Minor and former Mississippi Chancery Judge Wes Teel in the underlying Peoples Bank case. But USF&G voluntarily settled the case, and Teel did not even issue a final ruling in the matter. He did favor Peoples Bank at summary judgment on the issue of liability, but that finding was in line with prevailing Mississippi law at the time. Where is fraud in a case that USF&G voluntarily settled?

* At the heart of USF&G's civil complaint is the contention that it was the victim of a bribery scheme involving Minor and Teel. But the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned all of the bribery-related convictions in 2009. The remaining convictions essentially rested on an honest-services fraud charge.

* In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Skilling v. U.S., 28 S. Ct. 2896 (2010), honest-services convictions can stand only in cases where bribes or kickbacks are involved. As already shown, the bribery convictions in the Minor criminal case were overturned. And kickbacks were not even alleged.

That leaves us asking this question about the USF&G civil case: Where's the beef? The case rests on . . . well, almost nothing. But the firm is seeking $12.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages anyway.

Minor probably has grounds to seek Rule 11 sanctions against USF&G lawyers for bringing a nonmeritorious case for the purposes of harassment. He also probably has grounds for an abuse of process claim against USF&G and its attorneys.

With Henry Wingate on the case, what are the chances that a Ronald Reagan appointee would hold an insurance company and its lawyers accountable for bringing a baseless civil complaint?

The chances are slim, but the public should pay close attention to Henry Wingate's actions in USF&G v. Minor. It's a classic study of a federal judge who is so arrogant that he doesn't even try to hide his favoritism toward a corporate litigant. And the corporation seems happy to benefit from the law being bent like a pretzel.