Are Siegelman and Minor One Step Closer to Justice?

Major news on the justice front came today when a federal judge dismissed corruption charges against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).

But for those of us in the Heart of Dixie, here are the bigger questions: Did the judge's decision, in a round-about way, move former Alabama governor Don Siegelman closer to justice? And did the defendants in the Paul Minor case in Mississippi--attorney Paul Minor and former state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield--also inch closer to justice?

U.S. Judge Emmet Sullivan did not merely dismiss the case against Stevens, as Attorney General Eric Holder had requested. Sullivan also opened a criminal investigation into the prosecutors who butchered the Stevens case, appointing Washington, D.C., attorney Henry Schuelke as special prosecutor.

How bad was the prosecutors' behavior? Here's how the judge put it:

"In nearly 25 years on the bench, I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said.

Scott Horton, legal-affairs contributor for Harper's magazine, said, in essence, "If you think that was disgusting, you ain't seen nothing yet":

But the misconduct of Bush-era prosecutors in the Stevens case is child’s play compared to what was done in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman, Mississippi lawyer Paul Minor, judges Walter Teel and John Whitfield, and a half dozen other cases profiled here. So the question rests with Holder: when is he going to do something to rectify the mess he inherited? Judge Sullivan is right about the solution: it starts with education. Remind the government lawyers that they cannot wield their power corruptly or unethically without consequences. And make clear that unethical conduct will be dealt with swiftly and harshly, not swept under the carpet as it has been for the last eight years.

Want to read a devastating indictment of the Bush Department of Justice? Consider this paragraph from the Associated Press account of the Stevens ruling:

Sullivan said the matter was too serious to be left to an internal investigation by the department, which he said has dragged its feet looking into the misconduct. He criticized former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for not responding to complaints of misconduct in the case: "Shocking, but not surprising," Sullivan said.

Too serious to be left to an internal investigation by the department? And the judge was not surprised that the Bush DOJ didn't respond to charges of misconduct in the case? Wow, sounds like someone in the justice system is finally recognizing the truth about the last eight years.

The special prosecutor will focus heavily on three members of the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice--Brenda Morris, Nicholas Marsh, and Edward Sullivan.

The Public Integrity Section (PIS) was heavily involved in the Siegelman and Minor prosecutions. Could the investigation on the Stevens matter help shine some much needed light on the PIS's activities in the Siegelman and Minor cases?

It might be a pretty good place to start.

Dead Woman Receives a Parking Ticket

Let's file this one under the "I'm Not Making This Up" category.

A woman received a $30 ticket for parking her pickup truck outside the emergency room at UAB Hospital in Birmingham yesterday.

The woman, it turned out, had a good excuse for not moving her truck for about eight hours: She was dead.

At about 11:30 a.m. yesterday, about an hour after a Birmingham Parking Authority employee had placed a ticket on the truck's windshield, a passerby noticed Rebecca Kate Haley's body slumped over the steering wheel and notified authorities.

Haley, 25, had been dead at least eight hours, authorities said.

One news report said the parking worker did not notice anyone in the truck. Another report said the worker noticed Haley but thought she was asleep. Either way, you've got to be impressed with the human touch meter readers bring to the job.

What about UAB and its highly regarded medical center? I don't think the university is going to be using this story in its public-relations material. Imagine the headline: "Woman is dead for eight hours outside our emergency room; no one notices!"

This story hits us personally here at Legal Schnauzer. In the days before I was unlawfully terminated at UAB, I used to walk by the ER all the time. That's because it was on the way to one of my favorite lunch spots--Qdoba's Mexican Grill. (Have you tried the chicken fajita burrito at Qdoba's? Muy bueno!)

If I hadn't been cheated out of my job, I might have been walking by the ER at about 11:30 yesterday. Of course, with my mind on Qdoba's, I might not have been much help. Not sure I would have noticed a dead body, even if it had been on the sidewalk.

(By the way, several former coworkers have told me that a number of restaurants in the UAB area have gone out of business since I was terminated last May. I never realized it, but maybe I was a one-man stimulus package for the eateries in the UAB area. Hope my friends at Qdoba's are doing OK.)

Police still are trying to figure out how Haley died.

The Schnauzer Revisits The Finebaum Show

We paid another visit to the Paul Finebaum Radio Network yesterday, mainly to discuss our post about UAB basketball coach Mike Davis and his interview for the Washington State job.

(By the way, it looks Davis and UAB are stuck with each other. Davis announced yesterday that he had withdrawn his name from consideration at Washington State. A few hours later, WSU announced that it had hired Portland State coach Ken Bone.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Paul Finebaum and I go way back. We had adjoining desks in our days as hungry young sports reporters for the late Birmingham Post-Herald.

I was always amazed at Paul's "fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants" interviewing style. Before an interview, I would conduct research and write out questions and more or less stick to a script. Paul's first thought for the interview usually would come when he picked up the phone. I remember Paul doing a phone interview with an offensive tackle for Auburn in the early 1980s. I think the guy's last name was Stephenson. Anyway, Paul didn't have a clue what the guy did on the Auburn team. "Let's see, you play . . . (pages of media guide turning) . . . offensive tackle?" I was sitting close enough to hear Paul's end of the interview. And even though it didn't appear to be going well, Paul (somehow) managed to get a decent story out of it.

Paul's interviewing skills have matured considerably since those days, and it was neat to see that from the perspective of an interviewee. You can hear the entire interview by going to the Finebaum Network Web site, scrolling to the archives for 4/06, and clicking on hour No. 2. My interview starts at about the 20:35 point in that segment.

Our interview wound up ranging well beyond Mike Davis, to a number of other issues that come under "The UAB is Screwed Up" banner. They included:

* The role (not always positive) the University of Alabama Board of Trustees plays at UAB--Paul brought up the name of John McMahon, a member of the Board of Trustees who seems to be a particularly big player on the Birmingham campus. McMahon is the chairman of Ligon Industries LLC and has been chairman of the UAB Health System; he remains a member of the UAB Health System Board, where I understand he has close interaction with UAB President Carol Garrison. In recent days, I've discovered information that leads me to believe that my unlawful termination might have been sparked by a blog post or two I had written about the Birmingham health-care scene, involving HealthSouth Corp. and (in a behind-the-scenes way) UAB. If that's the case, Mr. McMahon is a strong candidate to have been involved in my firing. I've stated before that I don't think my termination was done without pressure from, or the OK of, at least one or two powerful board members. Could John McMahon be one of those board members? We will be examining that question very closely.

* Research fraud at UAB--I've written several times at Legal Schnauzer about massive research fraud at UAB. I'm continuing to gather information on that subject and will be writing a series of posts about it soon. When I mentioned it to Paul, he said, "Did you say research fraud?" Paul might be a multimedia star these days, but he's still got those reporter's instincts. I went on to explain that UAB had settled a whistleblower lawsuit in 2004 for roughly $3.6 million. But court documents, supported by a forensic accountant who used to be UAB's research-compliance director, indicate the actual fraud totaled an estimated $300 to $600 million. I then helpfully pointed out that U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, one of those wild and crazy George W. Bush appointees, has more or less glossed over the investigation and allowed UAB to raid the federal treasury, with barely a slap on the wrist. Perhaps alert citizens, both in Alabama and beyond, should pay attention to this story, I suggested. Paul seemed to agree.

* Carol Garrison's low marks in the business community--I had mentioned in yesterday's post that a local journalist is working on a story about business leaders who are unhappy with the "leadership" of UAB's president. Paul said he had heard a number of business leaders express negative reviews of Garrison. "They say she's impossible to deal with," Paul said. We both found that ironic, considering that Garrison is married to Julian Banton, former head of SouthTrust Bank, which became Wachovia and now is Wells Fargo (I think).

* The man who should have been UAB's president--I had posted previously that UAB's current malaise probably can be traced to its failure to hire Bernard Machen as president in 1997. Machen, the provost at the University of Michigan, appeared to be the frontrunner for the top job at UAB. But the UA Board of Trustees made the stupendously bad decision to hire W. Ann Reynolds instead--and then compounded the mistake by hiring Carol Garrison when Reynolds flamed out. Machen went on to become president of the University of Utah and now is at the University of Florida. Machen, I'm sure, has his shortcomings as a university president. But he hired Urban Meyer, who has led Florida to two national football championships. In the Southeast, that pretty much makes Machen a god among college administrators. And he should have been at UAB.

I hope Paul and I managed to enlighten a few folks about issues that are important to all Alabamians. But even if we didn't, we had a good time. And I know from experience, that the Finebaum show has a major impact on public opinion.

Don Siegelman and the Little Banner That Could

How do important messages about justice reach the public?

Jeff Miles, of Madison, Alabama, shows us one way to get the word out.

In a brief (1:28) video titled "The Little Banner That Could," Miles shows us how a simple message made its way from a small garage in north Alabama to within a few blocks of America's seat of power.

The message? "Free Don Siegelman." And where is it now located? On a house in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the Library of Congress and the U.S. House Office Building.

Join us for a little journey into the world of grassroots politics:




By the way, Miles has excellent taste in music. He sets the video to a song called "So Lonely," performed by JetStar 7. As a child of the '70s, my Schnauzer ears immediately said, "That song sounds familiar." Turns out it's an early classic from The Police. I wasn't familiar with JetStar 7, until today, but they do a great job of capturing the mood and reggae beat of the original. Here are Sting and the boys in the "So Lonely" video from 1978:

Is Basketball Coach Embarrassing UAB?

The proud past and possibly grim future of UAB basketball were on display in one edition of the Birmingham newspaper this weekend.

As a former 19-year employee at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I know how the successful men's basketball program has spread the UAB name around the nation in a positive fashion. For good measure, I've followed UAB athletics as a professional journalist in various capacities for 30-plus year, so I've seen the program from the inside out.

What I read in The Birmingham News on Saturday left me both sad and disgusted. UAB basketball is hardly the most important activity at UAB. But it is the most public activity--one that has been a remarkable success story.

To now see UAB basketball in a state of disarray is disturbing for those of us who know how the program reached a lofty status in an amazingly short period of time. But the decline in Blazer hoops is a symptom of larger leadership problems that have plagued UAB for 15-plus years.

Consider the juxtaposition of two stories in Saturday's Birmingham News.

On page 2 of the sports section was an article about Gene Bartow, the father of UAB athletics, being inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Missouri. Bartow led UAB to seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances in the 1980s, turning down job opportunities at numerous high-profile programs (Memphis, Kentucky, Wake Forest, Kansas, Arizona State, to name a few).

On page 1 was an article about current UAB coach Mike Davis interviewing for the head coaching position at Washington State University. In fact, Davis apparently traveled to the NCAA Final Four in Detroit on Saturday specifically to interview for the job.

That prompted Birmingham News columnist Kevin Scarbinsky to write a Sunday column with this headline: "Something's Strange About Davis Talking to Washington State."

Scarbinsky is right on target. And my guess is that Davis' dalliance with Washington State is a sign of brewing problems at UAB under the "leadership" of President Carol Garrison and Vice President Richard Margison, who oversees finance and administration (including human resources) but has played a major role in athletics for several years.

What's strange about Davis looking at Washington State? For one, WSU basketball long has been considered one of the most challenging jobs in major-college athletics.

The school is located in Pullman, Washington, and a quick check of your Rand McNally will tell you why the basketball job is viewed as difficult. Pullman is in extreme eastern Washington, right on the Idaho border and a good five-hour drive from Seattle. Basketball is a city game, and most college programs rely heavily on players from metropolitan areas.

Pullman might be a lovely college town, but it is one of sport's true outposts. By comparison, Starkville, Mississippi, is in the middle of the action. And WSU is a member of the ultra-competitive Pac 10 conference, battling for recruits against schools that are close to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Seattle.

Interestingly, Davis grew up about an hour's drive from Birmingham and has no clear ties to the West Coast. Scarbinsky puts it this way:

Davis is an Alabama native. If he's considering leaving UAB for Washington State, something's not right where he is.

Again, Scarbinsky is on target. And Davis' interest in Washington State--and my unlawful termination, for that matter--are just symptoms of much bigger problems on Birmingham's Southside.

Actually, I think one of two things might be going on with Davis:

* The Mike Davis is Arrogant Angle--To be fair to UAB, Davis has long been considered somewhat of a strange bird in coaching circles. He succeeded the legendary Bobby Knight at Indiana and took the Hoosiers to the Final Four. But he quickly wore out his welcome in the Heartland. Along the way, Davis developed a reputation for talking and acting in strange ways. I'm not aware of Davis ever behaving in a malicious way, but he seems to be a verbal loose cannon. Perhaps he is just too honest for his own good, but not long after arriving at UAB, he gave the impression that he didn't intend to stick around long. He imported three highly regarded transfers, including Indiana's Robert Vaden, and several top high-school recruits. It looked like Davis intended to lead UAB to a couple of NCAA Tournament appearances and then wait for the big-time job offers to roll in. But several players either left, flunked out, or got arrested, and those NCAA trips have yet to come. Davis has only four returning players for next year and needs to sign seven recruits this spring to have a full roster. The next couple of years are likely to be rough at UAB, and that might be why Davis wants out. Perhaps Washington State is the best he can do.

* The UAB Is Screwed Up Angle--It's possible that Davis saw early on that UAB's current administration is a mess. Maybe that's why he didn't want to hang around long.

Signs of trouble are everywhere at UAB. The university has numerous human-resources problems, many of which could have easily been avoided. Court documents indicate that research fraud has been, and probably still is, a major issue. And Garrison has shown questionable ethics from her earliest days at UAB, most notably by cavorting about with former University of Tennessee President John Shumaker, who wound up resigning amid a broiling scandal in Knoxville. (My unlawful termination, which Garrison upheld even though her own grievance committee found that it was wrongful, indicate the president's ethics haven't improved any.)

Sources tell Legal Schnauzer that a local reporter is working on a major story about Birmingham businesspeople who are unhappy with Garrison's leadership at UAB.

To top it off, recent reports indicate that UAB athletics might be the subject of scrutiny from the NCAA. Some reports say the NCAA inquiry focuses on academic fraud in the men's basketball program, a problem that might have started before Davis arrived.

If Davis goes to Washington State, he won't be the first high-profile UAB employee to bail out under curious circumstances in recent months. Cheryl E.H. Locke, UAB's former director of human resources, left for a seemingly lesser job at Wake Forest University.

I met face-to-face with Locke on two occasions, and it appeared that she was being forced to take actions that she had to know were unethical. My impression is that Cheryl Locke is a smart, capable person, and I suspect she grew weary of having to operate under a corrupt UAB administration.

Is Mike Davis checking the exits for similar reasons? That certainly could be the case.

Either way, the future doesn't look so good for UAB basketball. The Blazers desperately need a top-notch recruiting class this spring. It's hard to see how that is going to happen with the head coach showing strong interest in moving to Pullman, Washington.

Meanwhile, The Seattle Times is reporting today that Washington State yesterday interviewed Stew Morrill of Utah State and Ken Bone of Portland State. The newspaper said those two might be the frontrunners for the job.

That means Mike Davis and UAB could be stuck with each other for a while.

Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Siegelman Case

Attorney General Eric Holder focused this week on prosecutorial misconduct in the case of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK). And that raises this question: Does Holder have a clue what federal prosecutors did in the Don Siegelman case?

Holder announced that he intended to dismiss charges against Stevens because of prosecutorial misconduct. The new attorney general is being praised in many quarters, including The New York Times editorial page, for this first step toward righting some of the rampant abuses in the Bush Justice Department.

But if Holder wants to get a real eye-full of prosecutorial misconduct, he should review the prosecution of Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.

Primarily at issue in the Stevens case was prosecutors' failure to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. In the Siegelman case, prosecutors presented evidence that they knew was false.

One could argue that the prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case was far worse than in the Stevens' case.

Here's how Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, put it in a piece last February following 60 Minutes' story about the Siegelman case:

But even if we accept that it’s possible for the Bush Department to create a new category of “Democrats Only” Crimes, we still have the basic fact that the evidence on which the Siegelman conviction was secured was false, and was known by the prosecutors to be false from the beginning. Indeed, the evidence of this is now so overpowering that the Justice Department refused to answer charges on camera, just as it has resisted Congressional demands to turn over documents and wrongfully failed to comply with FOIA requests. The key testimony at trial came from a man named Nick Bailey, who, unbeknownst to Siegelman, was a crook. He never contested that fact. And he’s now in prison, where CBS interviewed him—notwithstanding the Justice Department refusal to authorize an interview. The prosecutors nabbed him and then told him he could get a light sentence if he worked with them to nail Siegelman, their real target. This very process is a perversion of the justice system. . . . But it gets still worse. Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy’s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.

Horton then turns to an interview 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley had with former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, who assisted in the Siegelman defense:

JONES: They got a copy of the check. And the check was cut days after that meeting. There was no– there was no way possible for Siegelman to have walked out of that meeting with a check in his hand.

PELLEY: So, Siegelman could not have had that check–

JONES: No.

PELLEY: –in his hand that Bailey–

JONES: It was–

PELLEY: –testified to seeing?

JONES: Absolutely impossible and they knew that, absolutely impossible.

PELLEY: That would seem like a problem with the prosecution’s case…

JONES: It was a huge problem especially when you’ve got a guy whose credibility was going to be the linchpin of that case. It was a huge problem.

Let's allow this to sink in for a moment: Federal prosecutors knew the testimony of Nick Baily was false, but they presented it anyway. And that proved to be the key testimony that "convicted" Don Siegelman.

And Eric Holder is worried about the Ted Stevens' case, where the evidence strongly suggests that Stevens was guilty as charged--despite the prosecutorial misconduct? Holder is correct to review the Stevens case, but some commentators have suggested that he should have asked for a new trial rather than dismissing charges. In other words, Stevens probably got more than he deserved from the Obama DOJ.

And Siegelman? He's already spent nine months in prison and might be headed back there given the recent bogus ruling by an appellate court that upheld his conviction.

Does Eric Holder have a case of "I worry about the wart on my butt while my pants are on fire" Syndrome? Sure looks that way.

The Bush Justice Department knowingly used false testimony to "convict" Don Siegelman, but we've yet to hear a word from the Obama administration.

The blogger Publius IX lays all of this out in an excellent post at Left in Alabama. And he rightly expresses indignation about what seems to be going on with Obama & Co. when it comes to justice issues:

To say that I am disappointed in the Obama administration is a gross understatement. This far surpasses the Rick Warren coddling, or Republican economic-plan coddling, or the inexplicable unwillingness to take the right steps with the banking system out of fear that Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Bachman will call him a "socialist." (Oh, the horror!) Only my boundless cynicism at the ways of those within the Beltway gives me any hope that this move was taken, to provide prophylactic political cover for a drop of the Siegelman charges. Even so, failing to make both moves simultaneously is a slap in the face of the Alabama Democratic Party.

Encouraging Signs in the Paul Minor Appeal

We noted that yesterday's oral arguments in the Paul Minor appeal were shaping up as an ugly April Fool's joke.

But events both before and during the proceedings indicated things went much better than expected.

First, U.S. District Judge Priscilla Owen recused herself from the three-judge panel. Owen had been scheduled to hear the appeal in the politically charged case even though she has close ties to Karl Rove.

Brendan DeMelle, at Huffington Post, reports:

Owen, whom the New York Times has described as "guided by the hand of Karl Rove," apparently took to heart Minor attorney Hiram Eastland's letter [PDF] asking Owen to recuse herself since Rove is being investigated by Congress and the Justice Department for his possible role in targeting Minor for indictment.

Owen was replaced immediately by Judge Fortunato Benavides, a Clinton appointee, adding a measure of balance to the panel, which would've been an all-Republican panel with Owen present.

DeMelle reports that the hearing itself produced encouraging signs:

Led by Judge Will Garwood, a Reagan appointee, the panel asked very thoughtful questions and seemed very receptive to the arguments raised by Minor's attorneys and asked repeated, tough questions of the Justice Department attorney, Elizabeth Collery. (Given the last minute announcement, Benavides had little time to review the details of the case, but still managed to pose tough questions and seemed to grasp the important 1st Amendment implications of Paul Minor's alleged bribery of judges through campaign contributions.)

The toughest questions came from Catharina Haynes, President Bush's sixth and final nominee to the Fifth Circuit who was confirmed by the Senate last April.

Haynes repeatedly asked Collery, the government attorney, to specifically explain "what is the deal" that the government alleges Paul Minor had with the judges whom he was accused of bribing. Haynes pointed out that, in order to qualify as an explicit quid pro quo bribe, there had to be an agreement between Minor and the judges on a specific result, and also pointed out that Judge Teel wasn't even a judge yet, he was simply running for the judgeship at the time Minor contributed to his campaign, so how could there be a specific official action offered by Teel to Minor in return when Minor couldn't possibly have had any cases pending before Teel.

Asked again and again to supply a concrete example of what that crucial quid pro quo was, the DOJ attorney seemed to waffle badly, arguing (again, with "vague" charges as the New York Times described this case originally) that Minor's campaign contributions must've been meant as bribes for some "future decisions" in his favor from the Judges.

The line of questioning mirrored what should have been present in the Don Siegelman appeal. But the three-judge panel that heard Siegelman's appeal in the 11th Circuit apparently did not measure up to the 5th Circuit panel:

Haynes, clearly understanding the requirement that there must be a specific official act in return for the contribution in order to constitute bribery, asked the DOJ attorney, "Don't you have to be able to articulate the deal?"

Judge Garwood asked excellent questions as well, probing the government's understanding of the Supreme Court decision in McCormick v. United States pertaining to the required quid pro quo for charges involving bribery. The government's case against Minor teeters on the assertion that Minor received a specific, favorable result from the judges which both parties must have agreed upon prior to such a ruling to constitute bribery under federal law.

By all indications, the DOJ failed to prove that today. The tough questioning and apparently skeptical looks from Judges Garwood and Haynes seemed to indicate that they were not persuaded by the government's arguments.

The Curious Juxtaposition of Ted Stevens and Don Siegelman

Just two days ago we noted that Thomas Jefferson, like Barack Obama, inherited a Justice Department that had been soiled by his predecessor. Borrowing from the work of Scott Horton at Harper's magazine, we opined that Obama & Co. should follow Jefferson's example and take decisive steps to right the injustices perpetrated by the Bush "justice" machine.

We learned yesterday that the Obama Justice Department indeed is taking steps to correct mistakes made under the Bush regime. But Obama & Co. sure picked a strange case to focus on first.

Attorney General Eric Holder has asked a federal judge to dismiss charges against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) because of apparent prosecutorial misconduct. It is encouraging to see Holder moving quickly to review questionable prosecutions brought under Bush.

But many progressives quickly raised this question: What about Don Siegelman?

The Obama Justice Department manages to review the Stevens case and determine that prosecutorial misconduct merits a dismissal? But the Siegelman conviction, which included both prosecutorial and judicial misconduct of a gross nature, remains intact?

What gives?

It's not like Stevens is a sympathetic figure. First of all, he's a Republican. And like many members of that tribe, he apparently can be one greedy SOB. Plus, evidence strongly suggests he was guilty as charged. Here's how Christy Hardin Smith put it at Firedoglake:

It is beyond disgusting that a skeezeball like Ted Stevens can walk away from all the pocket-lining he did whilst in office because the prosecutors on the case were too craven to follow basic legal principles. But there you are. The vaunted DOJ has fallen to such a level, and it will take an enormous amount of work to lift it back up to where it ought to be.

Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, clearly did not commit a crime. But he already has spent nine months in federal prison, and might be headed back there, after an all-Republican three-judge panel erroneously upheld his conviction at the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Why would Holder focus on the misconduct in the Stevens case before considering Siegelman? We can take a few guesses:

* The trial judge in the Stevens case helped bring the prosecutorial misconduct to light. The trial judge in the Siegelman case, Mark Fuller, was part of the misconduct and corruption.

* Stevens was represented by the Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly. That's the same firm that produced Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig. And that's the same Greg Craig who, according to Alabama whistleblower Jill Simpson, appears to be providing cover for a number of his former firm's GOP clients--including Karl Rove.

So that's how it works in D.C. these days? If you are a Republican with ties to Williams & Connolly, your case gets reviewed and dismissed? If you don't have those precious W&C ties, you are out of luck?

Don Siegelman took notice of the latest events. Reports TPM Muckraker:

"There seems to be substantial evidence of prosecutorial and other misconduct in my case, that would dwarf the allegations in the Stevens case," the former Alabama governor told TPMmuckraker in an interview moments ago.

Referring to Attorney General Eric Holder, Siegelman said that while he supports the Stevens decision, "I hope that [Holder] will take a look at some of the other cases that are buried on his desk."

Did Siegelman find irony in the Stevens decision? Yes, indeed:

Siegelman is clearly alive to the parallels between the two cases, along with their starkly different results, at least as of now. "That dichotomy did not escape me," he told TPMmuckraker.

"There was quite a bit of underlying facts that distinguished the [Stevens] case from mine," he said, while making clear he respects the former Alaska senator. "I was not charged with a single penny of wrong-doing."

Riley's Actions Speak Volumes About the Siegelman Case

Was the criminal case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman really a political prosecution?

The actions of Siegelman's successor, Republican Bob Riley, present strong circumstantial evidence that the answer is yes.

First, consider the latest news in Riley's efforts to allow a private company to develop a luxury resort hotel at a state park on Alabama's coast. Riley's plan was so distasteful that even the Republican-dominated Alabama Supreme Court ruled it was unlawful.

But here is what's really interesting about Riley's efforts to pave the way for an upscale development at Gulf State Park: The primary beneficiary of the plan was to be Auburn University. And one of Riley's staunchest supporters, Alabama Rep. Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn), has strong connections to Auburn University. It doesn't take a drastic leap in logic to figure that Riley's plan was a payoff of sorts to some of his financial backers.

Now, consider news that a committee in the Alabama Legislature intends to review several big-dollar contracts that have been awarded to people close to Riley. The contracts include all kinds of goodies for Drayton Nabers, Riley's former finance director. The Alabama Department of Revenue wants to double a $400,000 contract that Nabers has received to represent the state in an ongoing lawsuit concerning taxes.

Nabers, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is to receive $200,000 to help the state manage federal stimulus funds. That would bring his grand total to $1 million in state contracts since he lost an election bid in 2006.

Sounds like Nabers was lucky he lost to Democrat Sue Bell Cobb.

What do the stories about the luxury hotel and the hefty state contracts have in common? Both appear to involve Riley's friends and supporters receiving significant financial benefits from the state.

On the surface, these seem to be the kind of quid pro quo deals that got Siegelman in trouble. Wouldn't you think that Riley, with his predecessor having been convicted on federal corruption charges, would go out of his way to avoid anything that remotely looks like a "something-for-something" deal?

But he's not. In fact, Riley seems to almost flaunt his ability to make things happen for his supporters.

So what gives? I suspect this tells us two things:

* Riley knows that these kinds of deals, minus explicit quid pro quos required by federal law, are not crimes. You and I might think they are not the best way to conduct state business. But under the law, they are not crimes. They aren't crimes when Riley does them; they weren't crimes when Siegelman did them.

* Riley knows that Siegelman's prosecution was based on politics, not unlawful acts. Has Riley spoken out against such abuse of federal prosecutorial power? Not hardly. He has been more than happy to benefit from it. What does that say about Riley's character? From where I sit, it says his character is pretty sorry.

Will Paul Minor Appeal Be An April Fool's Joke?

Oral arguments in the appeal of Mississippi lawyer Paul Minor and two former state judges is set for today--April Fool's Day.

Perhaps that is appropriate.

Larisa Alexandrovna reports on at-Largely about two disturbing facts that indicate the fix might already be in on the Minor appeal.

One, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, chose a most unusual venue for oral argument. The court is based in New Orleans, but the Minor appeal will be heard in Austin, Texas, for reasons that are hard to fathom. Alexandrovna has some thoughts on what prompted the move:

Inexplicably, the court moved the oral arguments in the Minor case from New Orleans to Texas, in a small courtroom. One can only imagine the various reasons such a move was made. I am sure there is a good explanation for it, but I have yet to receive it. Minor's supporters and local reporters are not going to go down to Texas to spend the whole day waiting for his case to be heard--which incidentally was scheduled for the end of the day.

Then we have this fascinating piece of news. The three-judge panel will include Priscilla Owen. Who is Priscilla Owen? She is one of the most conservative and controversial appointees of the George W. Bush era. And guess who once served as her campaign manager? None other than Karl Rove.

You can almost hear Alexandrovna's jaw drop as she writes about this development:

Okay, now one would think that seeing as how Karl Rove has been implicated in the US Attorney scandal and allegedly Paul Minor's prosecution, she would have recused herself from the above ruling. She did not. Moreover, these cases are assigned randomly I am told. So, how then does one explain how Judge Owen is suddenly assigned to hear the oral arguments tomorrow?

We've already had a three-judge panel from the 11th Circuit in Atlanta butcher the Don Siegelman appeal. (And we will show you exactly how they did it in a series of upcoming posts.) Now it looks like the fix is in on the Minor appeal.

As we pointed in a series of 25-plus posts, the Minor case is a mind-blowing example of injustice. Trial judge Henry Wingate gave jury instructions that were the exact opposite of what the actual law says. No wonder Minor and codefendants Wes Teel and John Whitfield were convicted.

Here is just one of many posts we've written that show how the Minor trial was butchered. Now, one begins to get a foul odor from the Fifth Circuit, indicating that this butchery might be allowed to stand.

Eric Holder, are you paying attention? Barack Obama, anybody home?