No Wonder the Siegelman Prosecutor Didn’t Want an Investigation of the Juror Emails

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One of the key grounds for appeal in the Don Siegelman case is that there was evidence of juror misconduct–two jurors plotting how to get a conviction–that the prosecution had the US postal inspectors investigate even while insisting any investigation would taint the jury process.

At issue is a series of e-mails that arose in 2006 suggesting that two jurors had outside influence as they decided Siegelman’s bribery conviction. After he was found guilty, Siegelman sought a new trial over the e-mails, printed copies of which had been mailed to defense attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller denied the motion for a new trial, ruling that the allegations were unsubstantiated. Siegelman has cited the issue as a central point in his ongoing appeal.

Two weeks ago, the head of the Justice Department’s appellate division, Patty Merkamp Stemler, informed Siegelman’s attorneys that the department had discovered undisclosed information about the controversy as attorneys prepared for the appeal. In a July 8 letter, Stemler wrote that while Siegelman’s mistrial proceedings were pending, acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin asked U.S. postal inspectors to try to determine who sent the e-mails through the mail.

U.S. Marshals later informed Fuller that the inspectors had concluded the e-mails were fakes. They determined, for example, that one e-mail didn’t match up with the corresponding juror’s e-mail account.

But the information produced for prosecutors and given to the judge was never passed along to Siegelman’s attorneys for cross-examination. [my emphasis]

A letter John Conyers just sent to Michael Mukasey reveals that the prosecution team allegedly knew that one of these jurors was sending flirty messages to the prosecution team during the trial. In other words, when the prosecution team fought any investigation into improper juror conduct, they had reason to believe that there had been improper contact between jurors and the prosecution team.

Those are contacts, of course, that would remain hidden in any investigation the US postal inspectors would do.

The Whistleblower

Conyers explains that Tamarah Grimes, a member of the Siegelman prosecution team, turned over emails reflecting a conversation about juror contacts with the prosecution team.

This email chain is dated June 15, 2006–the day the Siegelman/Scrushy case was submitted to the jury for its decision. The key email in the chain was written by Ms. Patricia Watson, 

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Kids Grow Up Fast These Days; 8 Yr. Old Boy Charged As Adult With Murder

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images2.thumbnail.jpegSome of you have undoubtedly already seen news that an eight year old boy in Arizona is suspected of killing his father and another man renting a room in their home last Wednesday, November 5, 2008.

By all accounts, he was a good boy. No problems in school. No disruptions in his religious education classes at St. Johns Catholic Church, where he was to mark his First Communion this year.

So the police and neighbors in the 8-year-old’s small eastern Arizona community are at a loss to explain why he would have used a .22-caliber rifle to kill his father and another man at their home.

"That child, I don’t think he knows what he did, and it was brutal," said the family priest, the Very Reverend John Paul Sauter.

The police said the boy killed his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and another man, Timothy Romans, 39, on Wednesday. The men worked together, and Romans had been renting a room at the house, prosecutors said.

While not unheard of in criminal justice, this type of homicide by children, especially those under age 14, is pretty rare. Which makes the following the real story in this case.

The boy, who faces two counts of premeditated murder, did not act on the spur of the moment, St. Johns Police Chief Roy Melnick said … He just doesn’t decide one day that he’s going to shoot his father and shoot his father’s friend for no reason. Something led up to this." … On Friday, a judge ordered a psychological evaluation of the boy. Under Arizona law, charges can be filed against anyone 8 or older.
…
In a sign of the emotional and legal complexities of the case, the police are pushing to have the boy tried as an adult even as they investigate possible abuse, Melnick said. If convicted as a minor, the boy could be sent to juvenile detention until he turns 18.

The reason that there exists in US criminal justice a bifurcated system with minors handled in the juvenile system and adults in the traditional system is the time honored belief that minors do not possess the brain development, both physical and psychological, to allow them to form the requisite intent and properly understand the consequences of their actions. Thus minors charged with crimes, even serious and violent felonies, have traditionally been tried and processed as juveniles, which provides the ability to incarcerate and rehabilitate the defendant up until they reach the age of majority, 18 years old. Read more →

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Trash Talk – Raider Nation Edition

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No silly, not those Raiders, Al Davis died years ago, he just forgot to advise his still ambulatory carcass. I’m talking about the Texas Tech Red Raiders baby! Yes, Mrs. Randiego’s team is playing another huge game today, this week against the Oklahoma State Cowboys. OSU is the best team in Oklahoma according to Texas Radio (the one with the big beat).

Tech will get its first test as a top team with the Cowboys not far behind in statistics ad personnel. The Cowboys and Red Raiders rank in the top 10 nationally in total offense and scoring. They are fighting not only for a share of the lead in the Big 12 South, but also for the opportunity to stay alive in the BCS national championship picture. What may be the most interesting match-up is Tech’s No. 10 rushing defense against the Cowboys’ No. 5 rushing offense. Tech’s defensive line was by far the winning factor in controlling not only Colt McCoy — four sacks, one interception, one fumble — but also down in the trenches. Tech has allowed 349 yards per game this season and gave up less than 400 against Texas. The difference in the Longhorns and Cowboys are three talented running backs in Kendall Hunter (1,220 rushing yards) and Keith Totson (565 rushing yards). Add in quarterback Zac Robinson and the ability to run or throw, and suddenly a play-action pass to receiver Dez Bryant can turn the whole game around in a heartbeat. Robinson and Bryant have connected 60 times for 1,054 yards and 15 touchdowns this season. Another one could come down to the wire in Lubbock.

FAST FACTS: Cowboys — This is the third game in five weeks against a top 5 opponent on the road … OSU is trying to win two games in one season against top 10 opponents for the first time since 1976 … OSU hasn’t won in Lubbock since 1944. Red Raiders — Own the nation’s longest winning streak at 11 games, dating back to last season … Raiders have won eight of the last 11 in the series … Tech is 9-0 for the first time in 70 years.

The other huge game is Alabama and Liar Liar Nick Saban returning to a Saban-hate filled Baton Rouge and it’s LSU Cats. This could be ugly. The Tide can clinch the SEC West Championship with a win Saturday afternoon against LSU, and would appear to have clear sailing to a championship game against Florida in Atlanta. I don’t think so; am picking LSU to pull off the upset.

Elsewhere around the NCAA, it is not the most fascinating week. Utah already beat TCU in a curiously important, but sloppy game. That leaves Utah and Boise State left alive in the all important "mid-major that’s gonna get screwed by the BCS" category. Cal at USC is a big Read more →

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Palin’s Concession Speech

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There’s a detail in the NYT story on the Wasilla Wonder that explains something that confused me on election night.

As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist.

Around 10:30 on Tuesday night, Fox announced that McCain and Palin were going to speak shortly.

McCain. And Palin.

For a while, I thought maybe Palin spoke while the networks were showing the festival of joy in Grant Park. But then I realized that Fox had announced Palin would speak, but that she didn’t.

So not only did Palin show up before McCain with her text in hand. But someone told Fox news that she would get to speak as well as McCain. I guess it didn’t work out that way, huh?

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Why Janet Napolitano Is Right For Attorney General

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The election is nigh 24 hours in the bank, and the rumor wires and scuttlebutt are exploding with discussion of the makeup of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet and staff to be. Attorney General is a critical post in any administration; but perhaps at no time in the history of the United States as important as at this moment.

The thankless task of recreating the once shining star that was the Department of Justice will take a special skill set from the person chosen to be the next AG. DOJ Main is a festering mess; stocked with Cheney/Bush political lackeys and consiglieri, unqualified and inexperienced Regent plants, and literal criminals that have aided and abetted the evisceration of our Constitution and commission of torture and other war crimes.

A department of expediency over honesty and integrity was grown by the Bushies. From DOJ Main down through the line level career prosecutors in the various District US Attorney Offices, credibility and trust have been felled. The once shining continuity of impartiality, justice and rule of law is in dysfunctional chaos.

Janet Napolitano is the right person, the best qualified and most suited, by far, to meet the daunting challenge ahead at Attorney General.

Napolitano is well versed and experienced with constitutional law and civil rights, having been mentored as the hand picked protege of one of the country’s great Constitutional scholars and authorities, John P. Frank, one of the two legal fathers of the Miranda decision. She has sizable long term experience not only as the Arizona Attorney General (a huge office), but also as chief executive of an entire state government as Arizona Governor. Of critical significance, she was the US Attorney for the District of Arizona for six years under President Clinton, prior to her terms in state office as Arizona’s AG and Governor.

The job ahead is going to, in addition to the legal skills, require someone with Federal experience and the established ability to manage a giant bureaucracy. Janet Napolitano has a very rare combination of background and experience to fit that bill. The attention to bureaucratic detail, not just in Washington DC, but in all of the 93 US Attorney district offices is going to have to be immense. Wholesale institutional change needs to be implemented, and malefactors rooted out.

Janet Napolitano has this ability in droves over any other candidate discussed for AG. She is spectacularly good at bureaucratic detail and Read more →

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Schadenfreude 2006, the Sequel

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George Allen race-mongers. And loses.

McCain’s campaign fear-mongers. And loses.

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The Lay Of The Land

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The vote plugs along all across the nation. My wife and I have cancelled out John and Cindy McCain’s votes, so we got that going for us. Take that Grumpy John.

I have talked to Marcy a couple of times and things are good where she was stationed. One of the calls was literally because she was bored, so there are certainly no shenanigans afoot. Turnout heavy there too, and she reports noticeably elevated levels of youth turnout.

That is what I am hearing from friends around the greater Phoenix valley as well. High turnout; elevated youth and minority turnout. You gotta love it. Win, lose or draw, seeing participatory democracy in action is awe inspiring. I honestly, I swear, can see in the eyes of every bit of the public i have encountered today an expression and look of hope and excitement. A look that has been largely absent since 9/11.

And that is what it, and today, is all about. The President, and whatever man holds that job, really has limited powers in many regards. Can sure screw things up royally, we have seen that power, but as far as the affirmative power to transform our society, that physical capability is fairly limited. But, put the right guy, at the right time, in the job; a guy that has the power to lead, to inspire, to motivate – well then you have something special. We, hopefully, are on the cusp of just that.

Barack Obama, irrespective of the policy specifics that we may each agree or disagree with, is a leader. He is a motivator. He brings hope. And there lies the real power; the power to get people moving and believing again. And that is what we need. The Republicans are right, America is exceptional when it is motivated and joined in the battle at hand. George Bush and the Republicans have sapped so much of that out of us at this point that we are in dire straits.

Today that changes. Today the switch is flipped. Get fired up! Get ready to go! Let’s rock and roll folks!

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If You’ll Be My Dixville Chicken, I’ll Be Your Tennessee Lamb!

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Obama Wins Dixville Notch!!!

Barack Obama – 15
John McCain – 6

Big upset, GOP always wins Dixville (except for Bartlett being Bartlett)

UPDATE FROM HOWIE: Dixville Notch, New Hampshire has 75 residents and 21 registered voters. They just voted at midnight– and the winner is… Barack Obama, a huge break with tradition for an overwhelmingly Republican bastion. The last Democrat to win there was Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Obama took 15 votes, McCain 6 and Nader 0. Jeanne Shaheen also won. And the other hamlet that votes at midnight, Hart’s Location, population 42, also gave Obama a win– 17-10.

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McCain Was The Most Reprehensible Of The Keating Five And He Hasn’t Changed

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McCain & Keating Bahama Buds

McCain & Keating Bahama Boondoggle

Teddy at the Campaign Silo pointed out yesterday, citing a damning new article in The New Republic, that John McCain was almost certainly the source for a set of illegal leaks during the Keating Five investigation — leaks that, if proven, would have been cause for his expulsion from the United States Senate for perjury, not to mention the underlying corruption and malfeasance from his relationship with Charlie Keating.

As The New Republic related:

One day in early March 1986, John McCain, an Arizona congressman, sat down to write a letter. McCain had heard that a long-time friend and donor, Charles Keating, was upset for being listed as a member of McCain’s campaign finance committee when a more prominent position would seem more appropriate. So McCain apologized. Needlessly it turned out, for "Charlie," as he signed his letter, would reply a few days later: "John, don’t be silly. You can call me anything…I’m yours until death do us part."

The entire article is a must read; it is a brutally clear exhibition of John McCain’s deeply ingrained, pathological, self serving dishonesty and soulless backstabbing lack of honor.

Now the thing that most, if not all, have overlooked here is the timing of Charlie Keating’s retort; it is not just that it was before McCain was sworn in as a United States Senator, it was right as Keating was pumping big money into McCain’s general election campaign for his first run at Barry Goldwater’s old Senate seat.

Charlie Keating wasn’t helping a friend, he was buying what he considered to be a future President. And they both knew it.

As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tom Fitzpatrick, who knew McCain intimately, both socially and professionally, presciently said back in 1989:

You’re John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker. Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

He poured $112,000 [amount later shown to be far greater] into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.

Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.

So he flew you and your family around the country in Read more →

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Ronald Reagan Endorses Obama, McCain Still Fraudulently Glomming Off Of Goldwater

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McPrickly/Cheney by twolf

McPrickly/Cheney by twolf

Ruh roh, Ronald Reagan has formally endorsed Barack Obama for president! Okay, it is the non-zombie Reagan, Ron Jr., but still:

I assumed most people already knew that I had supported Obama. Anyone who has spent five minutes listening to my program would have known that. But if it helped to make it official, I’m happy to make it so.

This hot on the heels of the news that Dick Cheney, appearing at a Wyoming rally today, gave his glowing formal endorsement to John McCain.

The Salon War Room reports:

The vice president, who may still be a scary costume on future Halloweens even once he leaves office, told a Wyoming Republican event Saturday that he was "delighted" to support McCain and Sarah Palin. "I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain," Cheney said.

Whoo doggie. What a way for John Sidney McCain III to kick off the last weekend of his campaign. First, Ronald Reagan’s former Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein, one of the leaders of the ultra-influential Off The Record Club, flat out endorses Obama and says McCain isn’t fit for the office of President. McCain recovers by getting an endorsement, but it is from the only politician in America with a lower personal approval rating (15% last noted) than George Bush. And now Ron Reagan weighs in.

Very impressive.

In other news, as Marcy points out, John McCain is going to wrap up his campaign in Prescott Arizona.

I would suggest McCain’s decision to make the sentimental stop in New Hampshire, as much as the stop in Prescott, suggests McCain knows any stumping he does this weekend will do little good. Instead, he’s going to relive his glory days of surprise wins in New Hampshire; he’s going to try to elevate this losing bid in hopes it might some day have the same relevance as Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid. McCain’s campaign stops this weekend are about McCain and his ego, not about mobilizing Republicans to go to the polls.

Yep, it is all about McCain’s ego alright. It always is with John McCain; he cares about only one thing in life, and that is himself. McCain constantly schleps into Prescott trying to lay claim to the mantle of Arizona’a own, Barry Goldwater. But McCain has no such claim, and he never has.

Unlike John McCain, who mindlessly gloms onto Prescott to falsely build himself up with the legacy of another, Barry Goldwater was a native son. Barry’s roots in Prescott were not false and fraudulent; they were real. Goldwater started and ended his campaigns on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse, smack dab in the middle of the historic downtown Prescott Town Square, because it was right across the street from the successor to the original Goldwater family store in Prescott.

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