Rove-connected judge recuses self from Minor case04/01/2009 @ 10:51 pm
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna
There were startling new developments on Wednesday in a case of alleged political prosecution of a Mississippi attorney.
Once-prominent attorney Paul Minor, jailed on charges of bribery, has alleged that his prosecution was politically motivated and timed to Mississippi's gubernatorial elections. He has also alleged that there was direct involvement by former Bush White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove.
Surprise recusal from judgeThe United States 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear an appeal of the case today. Scheduled to serve on the three-judge panel were Judges Will Garwood, Priscilla R. Owen, and Catherina Haynes. This morning, however, only hours before oral arguments were to be presented, Judge Owen recused herself from the case.
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Judges are skeptical of government's argumentMinor's defense team hired a court reporter to document the court proceedings. A rush transcript has been obtained by Raw Story and is linked here.
Questions from the judges showed skepticism of the government's case, says attorney and Columbia University Professor Scott Horton.
"It's always problematic assessing what's in the mind of a judge based on the questions he asks," Horton wrote in an email. "But in this case, it's clear that Judge Garwood has some real problems with the prosecutions case. He seems to think the theories are stretched pretty thin and he is obviously troubled by the government's claims that campaign donations to a judge can simply be counted as bribe payments."
"If the government applied this rule uniformly," Horton continued, "hundreds of judges would be prosecuted all across the country. And the Bush Justice Department applied this 'rule' only against Democrats, even though their Republican opponents took substantially larger sums of money from agents for litigants before them and were never investigated. If I were a government prosecutor sitting in the room, I would have walked out with a ill feeling. But we have to keep in mind that Garwood has a pretty strong trackrecord of upholding convictions, so the questions were a bit surprising."
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http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=15050 Thank you lala_rawraw - thank you for reporting this.