It Does Happen In America - The Political Trial of Don Siegelman

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Hell, I was finished reading the OP as soon as I saw "Bush" and "regime" in the same sentence, not to mention the "crime family" wisecrack.

Naw, no bias there. :rolleyes:
 
Energy can only be transformed, not created or destroyed. So where's all that hate going to go if Obama gets elected? There's no way it will just dissipate. Hopefully, we'll never know. Happy leftists make me nervous.
 
Pat with all due respect this just is just Alabama politics. Compared to some of the shenanigans of Big Jim and Little George this is nothing. Rather trite article too. :rolleyes:
 
It would be interesting to know if the author would have written it if he had lived in Montgomery and seen the guy first hand. (I did.) Siegelman had ten times the amount of crime under his belt than was ever reported--he was more crooked than a bowl of overcooked egg noodles. Something to to be understood in the matter is that governors always have a network of enough judges and lawyers around them to keep them out of reach, but in his case he had only about 75% at most in his pocket, and even many of the ones he had disliked him after a while. If you don't keep the Montgomery bar happy, you're history no matter if you're the 2nd incarnation of Jesus. It was only a matter of time before something stuck. Trust me, you gotta be BAD for this to happen, and he was just bad enough to get it. You won't find more than a paragraph out of the phonebook who will disagree.

Anyone in the Alabama political system who isn't happy about Siegelman getting prison stripes is only nervous that they'll get theirs next.
 
Oh, absolutely it is! You DON'T go after someone in the governor's seat or in the bureacracy for fear of running afoul of the Montgomery and Mobile bar. It's buddy-buddy everywhere, but it takes on a particularly potent flavor there. Hunt wouldn't have been worth the risk for someone to go after him, but Siegelman got the black spot you could say.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/opinion/27wed4.html?ref=opinion

Apparently WHNT Alabama's CBS affiliate didn't want to show the 60 Minutes bit so they had a convenient glitch in their broadcast that took the station off the air just long enough to miss the Don Siegelman story.

They blamed it first on CBS in NY and then opened their own investigation which came up empty.

Because of the backlash WHNT had to rebroadcast the story twice. Now it's sparked a lot of controversy that might not have happened had the story aired Sunday in the first place.

I wonder if the people who are casting doubt on this story are the same ones that cheered on the multi-million dollar Independent Counsels investigation of White Water. Some thing that the Clintons had already been cleared on three times before Ken Starr got to it.
 
....running afoul of the Montgomery or Mobile bar.
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I gotta go with Yellowfin on this. You really have to see it day-to-day to know the guy got his just desserts. Gov. Hunt never had the lack of scruples to do as Siegelman did.
 
If I understand federal procedures correctly, to get a grand jury indictment requires that the grand jury find probable cause to indict based on the evidence presented to it. That's not an incredibly high obstacle to overcome, but it is something.

Next, the members of the jury are selected through the voir dire process that allows each side to strike potential jurors for a variety of reasons.

Finally, for a criminal conviction, the prosecution must prove each element of each charged crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a fairly high obstacle.

Even if Bush/Rove manipulated the grand jury to get an indictment, I find it difficult to believe the members of the jury, selected through the voir dire process in which Siegelman's defense counsel participated, would do the bidding of Bush/Rove and find Siegelman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based on insufficient evidence.

As for people complaining about the process, evidence, and verdict, I cannot remember a criminal trial in which no one complained about the process, evidence, and verdict.
 
If I understand federal procedures correctly, to get a grand jury indictment requires that the grand jury find probable cause to indict based on the evidence presented to it. That's not an incredibly high obstacle to overcome, but it is something.

Next, the members of the jury are selected through the voir dire process that allows each side to strike potential jurors for a variety of reasons.

Finally, for a criminal conviction, the prosecution must prove each element of each charged crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a fairly high obstacle.

Even if Bush/Rove manipulated the grand jury to get an indictment, I find it difficult to believe the members of the jury, selected through the voir dire process in which Siegelman's defense counsel participated, would do the bidding of Bush/Rove and find Siegelman guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based on insufficient evidence.

As for people complaining about the process, evidence, and verdict, I cannot remember a criminal trial in which no one complained about the process, evidence, and verdict.
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Stop confusing them with facts.
 
Yellowfin is all over it...

Siegelman was a crook if EVER there was one. You really had to be living here to fully appreciate.

I guess it's good to see someone trying to take up for him, because you sure won't find anyone here in Alabama trying to get him out of prison!
(Unless maybe you happen to find one of his 'Don King-esque' preachers that he had throughout the trial(s)... Who knew he had such 'soul' and religion til he got in trouble:D)
 
I am far more willing to believe the judgment of a jury that he is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt than the conspiracy theories of people who have nothing better to do than attack the current administration for any action they take. I have issues with Bush also, but we need to keep a foot in reality here.
 
But that would mean we'd lose 25% of the posters in L&P
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:D

I was going to mention Sieglman's no-bid contracts and how I'd predicted he'd take the fall back in the third year of his regime but I guess that might drive off too many posters. So just forget it. I never said nuthin. :(
 
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