Conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens Is Thrown Out 440
A federal judge has thrown out the conviction of the senator who educated us all about the true nature of the Internet. Ted Stevens had been convicted last fall of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor, 8 days before he lost his Senate re-election bid. The judge blasted the US Department of Justice prosecutors for mishandling the case in ways that might rise to the level of criminality. "In 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct in this case," Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said. He called the allegations "shocking and disturbing." According to the article, "Several jurors have told The Washington Post that the evidence against Stevens was overwhelming during a month-long trial that ended in October."
Re:This is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
This is complete fiction. The Shakers took years to produce our legal system, and produced nearly a thousand books to describe it. At no point has the legal system you described existed in this nation.
Stop making points by making up stories.
Common Law (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, considering that our legal system is a Common Law system, and that it inherited from British Common Law with all it's many-centuries history, it's ridiculous to think that legal practice was ever simple enough to be contained in only a hundred books, much less one.
Re:This is bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't some nit-picking technical error, though. One of the prosecution's main witnesses contradicted his trial testimony in a recorded interview, which the prosecution deliberately withheld from the defense.
Stevens is almost certainly still guilty, but I don't think you can now say that he was convicted at a fair trial, which is why if the DOJ still wished to convict him, they would have to move for a retrial.
Re:Common Law (Score:3, Informative)
That's not technically correct, while most of the US is indeed common law, with the exception of LA which uses Napoleonic code to this day.
Re:Don't forget... (Score:3, Informative)
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." - Anon
You _would_ like to take credit for such an oft used quote, wouldn't you Mr. AC. Robert Hanlon objects:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_Razor [wikipedia.org]
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:3, Informative)
Then what's up with this press release [usdoj.gov] from the DoJ under Bush saying that a third had submitted their resignations by March 14th and the remaining lawyers were set to be "transitioned" by June? Why did Gonzalez's Chief of Staff [latimes.com] claim they fired all the Clinton appointees, with most gone by April 2001?
The Department of Justice isn't supposed to be full of partisan hacks, and most of them aren't. Just because the case was against a prominent Republican Senator doesn't mean Democratic lawyers were on the case. That's why there was such a big hullaboo about the firings of DoJ lawyers for political reasons. Those lawyers were Bush appointees, and they were allegedly fired because they weren't going after enough Democrats.
Re:Not surprising (Score:3, Informative)
That's not my recollection at all. My recollection was the police work was sloppy. A detective apparently lied about using a racial epithet. What I do remember is the defense insinuated that the police was out to frame O.J. when it was more likely the case was that the police and the prosecution made major mistakes. The defendant had a high dollar legal team that was able to use these mistakes.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:2, Informative)
No. Citation isn't needed. This is a discussion board, not a term paper or encyclopedia article. You don't need a citation for common knowledge, and asking for one just admits you're lazy.
In case you still don't have time, here, let me google that for you [lmgtfy.com].
Now you can go bicker in a wikipedia discussion about whether or not the article about this 'scandal' deserves to contain the word "unprecedented" in the title.
Re:Who got fired? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
>If the government were prohibited from interfering in the economy, there wouldn't be any incentive for a oil company to renovate a politician's house
While that's a nice thought, I challenge you to figure out how it would be implemented.
If we force the federal government to do nothing other than exactly what the Constitution lets it, in the most conservative sense -- maintain armed forces for the defense of the land, regulate *actual* interstate commerce, which is to say only settling disputes between states and handling state-foreign state disputes -- the federal government would *still* interfere in the economy because it would be taking money out to pay for what it's doing, and it would be pumping money into some areas in pursuit of its duties. Both would be areas for corruption to thrive, just as corruption thrives now.
If you rewrote the Constitution such that the federal government had zero funds and zero influence, if you essentially canceled it, then the individual states would provide similar functions and be just as full of corruption. If you get rid of them, then individual cities would do the same, and eventually down to homeowners' associations, I suppose. I read about graft and corruption involving parent-teacher association funding.
*Any* form of government will interfere in economies. That's their reason for existence, is to interfere with economy on the behalf of the people who make the economy run and benefit from its productivity.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:3, Informative)
Factually incorrect (As I suspected it might be. Apologies, but your statement smelled unlikely, simply based on the rules for pardons typically respected by Presidents. Bush was atypical.)
From the Wikipedia article "In 1996, he pleaded guilty to reduced charges of mail fraud. He was fined and was sentenced to 17 months in prison, of which he served 15. Rostenkowski was pardoned in December 2000 by President Clinton."
Basically at that point the pardon was symbolic - he had served his time, admitted his guilt, et al.
Pug
Re:Jury opinion irrelevant, resistance is futile (Score:3, Informative)
He could be tried by the State of Alaska on the charges (or any other State), but only such charges that do not trigger federal subject matter jurisdiction. I haven't paid close attention to the case, but I thought the charges were related to alleged federal, not state, violations and/or criminal acts, meaning no prospect of state prosecution.
Legally, he's not a convicted felon.
Re:Jury opinion irrelevant, resistance is futile (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:2, Informative)
Prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense.
They did so knowing that they were violating the law, and did so deliberately to influence the result of an election.
The election results, at the very least, deserve to be thrown out. This was despicable. Moreover, as far as Democrats, this was just business as usual [courttv.com].
Re:No, Lets be REALLY clear (Score:5, Informative)
STEVENS: That's, that's the way it should be. But as a practical matter, the question is, what can they convince the jury, uh grand jury, to charge us with? That's the problem. But when I was a district attorney, I handled grand juries, lots of them. They're funny people, but they also are people from within the community. And your reputation and everything else comes into play, as far as grand juries are concerned
ALLEN: Well it has been, I'll tell you."
STEVENS:...You've got to get a mental attitude that these guys can't really hurt us. You know, they're not going shoot us. It's not Iraq. What the hell? The worst that can be done, the worst that can happen to us is we round up a bunch of legal fees and might lose and we might have to pay a fine, might have to serve a little time in jail. I hope to Christ it never gets to that
Oh yeah it sounds like an innocent man there, not one playing the odds that his massive Alaska support base will get him off of whatever he does. He *knew* it was illegal and did it anyway.
He also readily admitted he didn't pay for many of the things he received; the grill, the furniture, the permanent generator, the massage chair. Yet he didn't disclose those things as he was *legally obligated* to do.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you'd followed the trial, you'd know that he did a whole heck of a lot of renovations, and actually paid for a lot of them. In that context, not noticing having never received an additional bill for more work is at least plausible, unlike having never received the bill.
Re:Is He Guilty (Score:5, Informative)
And again I feel compelled to mention that the President and AG during the this whole process were Republicans. Christ. This is the second brain dead: "The Dems trumped up charges to hurt a real conservative" post I've seen that totally ignores the fact that a Republican government did this. What did Obama go back in time and setup a "Shadow-DOJ" to do his bidding a year or more before his actual election?
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, still going with this one? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin [nytimes.com]
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:0, Informative)
Here we have an example of an idiot who doesn't realize that the career lawyers responsible for the case were all Democrats.
But don't think for a second that "PopeRatzo" is going to let facts cloud his judgment once he's got a good head of conservative-hate going.
To expand a little bit, maybe the career lawyers who pushed this case weren't micromanaged by the political appointees. Maybe Republicans are more ethical than PopeRatzo who suffers from a severe case of projection.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:3, Informative)
Here we have an example of a pure idiot who cannot grasp the simple fact that the prosecutors in the case are all lifelong Democrats.
Then again, I've never known PopeRatzo to let these pesky "facts" get in the way of his insane ramblings.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:5, Informative)
See response to "PopeRatzo."
The prosecutors involved in this malicious, illegal prosecution "just so happen" to be lifelong Democrats. The "Bush DOJ" had nothing to do with it.
Re:This is bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that one man (the judge) can overturn the jury of his peers on the basis that the lawyers who got him convicted did it wrong is proof that it takes only 2 corrupt men in a room full of people to get away with anything
*Betting on being able to do that is a fairly absurd idea seeing as how you don't know beforehand who will comprise the judge and prosecution. If your assumption is just that everyone everywhere is bribable, well, in that case we're already screwed, and I think bribing six jurors would be easier and cheaper anyway.
*Unless the system is already rife with corruption, I don't think you're quite considering how dangerous it is to approach said persons with the prospect of a bribe. Most likely, you would just wind up sealing your fate.
*You forget that any decision a judge makes can be reviewed by other judges.
*You forget that a corrupt senator may also be impeached by congress. (and if you think parties will stick up for their friends when they're tainted by public ire, see how many friends Gov. Blagojevich has)
*You'll note that despite being reprieved, Ted Stevens was cost the election. In a democracy, gaming the system may keep you out of the pen, but merely being brought into court can see to the end of your political significance.
I am all for punishing the guilty, but I don't think the expressed paranoia quite justifies abridging our present safeguards against malicious court proceedings. And it isn't as if having courts rigged more toward the prosecution couldn't also be used as a means of protecting (or exerting) high-level corruption.
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:3, Informative)
The justice system is about accounting for crimes. Preventing them sounds nice but is likely not possible.
Blaming Clinton for 9/11 (Score:1, Informative)
The attack took 5 years to prepare [wikipedia.org]. Most of it — on Clinton's watch.
Another point against Clinton is that he refused to accept Osama bin Laden, when Sudan offered him. Clinton was a lawyer and rejected the offer [wikipedia.org], because there was no grand jury indictment against Osama (yet). So instead of going to a US jail, Osama went to Yemen and is mocking the US ever since — inspiring thousands of terrorists world-wide. For better or worse, Bush — not being a lawyer — would've taken Sudan on their offer and the 9/11 would never have happened. USS Cole would, probably, not have been attacked either.
There is plenty in 9/11 to blame Clinton for... Most in fact...
Re:Still Sounds Guilty to Me (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, Clinton does deserve blame for some of what led to 9/11, even though he wasn't in office on 9/11.
Then again, the blame goes at least as far back as Reagan giving Osama weapons to fight the Soviets with.
Re:Is He Guilty (Score:1, Informative)
The findings of a legal jury (if not a mistrial) are "guilty" or "not guilty."
At best, a court can find you not guilty.
For a defendant in the USA that's pretty damned good. Double jeopardy and all that.
They [the courts] set bail on the presumption of guilt.
No, they set bail based on the probability of the suspects likelihood to appear before the court and the perceived danger to themselves or others.