http://www.justice-integrity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=489:historic-siegelman-case-showdown-looms-nov-2&catid=44:myblogHistoric Siegelman Case Showdown Looms Nov. 2By Andrew Kreig
A legal showdown of historic proportion unfolds Nov. 2 in an Alabama federal court. Squaring off in Montgomery Courtroom B4 at 10 am in the courthouse portrayed below are the Obama Justice Department and its most important domestic defendant, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, once the leading Democrat in his state. Siegelman wants the government to provide documents proving that Middle District U.S. Attorney Leura Canary really withdrew from the case, as she claimed. The government contends he is not entitled to confidential government documents.
Siegelman after five years has finally won a hearing before a new judge, Charles S. Coody, on a request for documents that are central to the 2006 convictions on corruption charges. Beyond that, Siegelman is in the rare position of having witnesses step forward to provide evidence that his prosecutors and trial judge framed him. But both the Bush and Obama officials have withheld the documents. Meanwhile, Siegelman has been tried and sentenced to a lengthy prison term in what our Justice Integrity Project, among others, has described as the nation's most notorious political prosecution in decades. That's all been written many times, and is synopsized below with both sources and denials.
The main and more novel focus of my column today is how this case exemplifies others around the nation whereby the Obama administration fails to protect our nation's precious legacy of due process. Already, this disgraceful pattern has deeply damaged Obama's re-election chances and legacy, probably irreparably.
You don't believe that? I can understand that. I repeatedly encounter in Washington and elsewhere well-established, reasonably well-informed professionals in journalism, law or politics who have barely, if ever, heard of Siegelman and his ordeal. Many of them are immersed in mainstream political punditry, typified by the chatter on Sunday morning news talk shows. Their lack of awareness of the dark and dirty secrets in political prosecutions doesn't surprise me. The Washington Post has never published an in-depth story on the Siegelman case despite what must be at least 100,000 citizen protests to the White House, DOJ and news organizations. The important but far-from-definitive reporting by the New York Times and CBS News in 2007-2008 has long since disappeared. Most other news organizations have scant resources to report on Alabama. So, they rely on skimpy wire service summaries of local news reports and official documents. Beyond that, busy professionals tend to assume, in a Civics 101 mindset, that Democrats in an Obama administration along with the inherent fairness of the judicial system would correct any partisan irregularities remaining from the Bush-Rove era.
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