Political prosecution in Mississippi

Don Siegelman isn't the only victim of political prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department.

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. discusses his experiences on the other side of the justice system with Larisa Alexandrovna.

Diaz argues that he was singled out for prosecution because of his personal and political ties to Paul Minor, a successful trial lawyer and one of the biggest Democratic donors in the state.

Minor was constant thorn in the side of Mississippi Republicans who were hoping to reshape the state supreme court with the help of the Chamber of Commerce.

Diaz and his supporters allege that US Attorney Dunnica Lampton engineered a politically motivated prosecution to derail Minor and Diaz a few months before the gubernatorial elections.

Minor and Diaz are longtime friends and political allies. When Diaz ran for office, Minor was his trusted adviser. Minor also personally guaranteed a loan to the Diaz campaign. Loan guarantees are both legal and common in Mississippi elections.

As a judge, Diaz never ruled on a single case involving Minor or his firm. Yet, somehow a legal campaign loan became a pretext for federal bribery charges. Diaz was tried and acquitted twice. The first trial was for bribery. The second was for tax evasion. The second time around, prosecutors tried to convince a jury that Diaz was legally required to report Minor's loan as personal income. The loan wasn't personal income, it was all spent on the campaign. The jury took just 15 minutes to acquit Diaz on the tax evasion charge.

I've only told you part of the Diaz story. The full version has many twists and turns , including an FBI agent getting exiled to Guantanamo, a chronically tardy judge, real conspiracies, fictitious conspiracies, suspicious burglaries, suspected arsons, and a despicable attempt to use children as leverage to exact a false guilty plea from a parent. Read the whole thing.

Comments

[Pennant]

Can you say malicious prosecution kids? I knew you could.

I do wonder if this couldn't backfire in the end. Would the voting populace start mistrusting the legitimacy of prosecutions of Democratic candidates because of cases like this and Siegelman's?

[Siegelman Justice]

Larisa Alexandrovna is an ace investigative journalist. She's done excellent work on political prosecutions. Scott Horton (sp?) has also done a lot of the heavy lifting regarding politicians like Don Siegelman getting the kind of Soviet style justice that makes kangaroo courts look dignified.