Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco & GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South(Larisa Alexandrov)

[kpete]

Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South

By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane | Uncategorized | Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Almost immediately after his appointment as US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi in late 2001, Dunnica Lampton began to investigate key Mississippi Democrats.

Trial lawyer and major Democratic campaign contributor Paul Minor (photo at right) quickly became a target of such an investigation. Minor, one of the largest Democratic donors in the South and the largest in Mississippi, would quickly find himself in the midst of a political firing line.

On July 25, 2003, three months before the Mississippi gubernatorial election, in a case that would stun the legal community, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Paul Minor, former chancery court judge Wes Teel and former circuit court judge John Whitfield were indicted on charges of bribery, relating to loan guarantees that Minor had made to the three judges to help defray campaign costs.

There was no state law prohibiting Minor’s contributions, and his trial resulted in an acquittal on some charges and a deadlocked jury on others. However, this trial was immediately followed by the unsealing of fresh charges.

During the second trial, presiding Judge Henry Wingate excluded evidence showing that Minor had a long-established pattern of offering loans or loan guarantees to his friends in the legal community, thus creating the appearance that Minor had helped the three judges in hopes of receiving something in return.

Lots more (great investigative reporting) at:
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/24/justice-for-sale-how-big-tobacco-teamed-up-with-the-gop-to-crush-democrats-in-the-south/