Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
June 19th, 2007The Birmingham News ran an editorial in today’s paper urging U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller to throw the book at former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.
Perhaps the Birmingham News should have sent the reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for an ad hoc little series investigating Democrats in the Alabama Legislature who also teach in the Community College system to investigate the judge and the prosecutor in the Siegelman-Scrushy case.
They will have egg on their faces when we publish our investigation over the next few days. Bur for now, here’s part of what this corporate, chain newspaper had to say about the case under the headline: Crimes and punishment.
Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy say their families would be devastated by the long prison terms prosecutors are recommending for them….
But in handing down sentences on June 26, U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller can’t rule based only on how it will affect Siegelman’s and Scrushy’s families…. The federal sentencing structure goes beyond trying to measure the realm of physical danger. It acknowledges, for instance, the damage done by those who abuse the public trust.
Grave harm is inflicted on society when people entrusted with power use it not for the public’s good but for their own good or the good of their benefactors. In the case of Siegelman and Scrushy, jurors concluded that Siegelman traded a seat on a powerful board that controls expansion of hospitals and health care services, all for a $500,000 donation to his lottery campaign. The federal jury concluded Siegelman was selling that board position, and Scrushy was buying.
That’s a serious crime, and as The News consistently argues, it’s a crime that deserves serious punishment.
This from the same newspaper that barely acknowledges its own racist past, that botched the investigation of Bill Baxley in 1986 and handed the election to one redneck idiot named Guy Hunt. The paper ran every press release Richard Scrushy and HealthSouth sent them for 20 years without ever conducting its own investigation of HealthSouth, until that day when Mr. Scrushy decided to cash in his expiring stock options and sell. A lot of people in Mountain Brook lost money on the stock, including the publisher of the Birmingham News and a lot of his friends, so The News turned rapid against Mr. Scrushy and they have been after him ever since, even when a jury aquitted him in Birmingham.
This is the same paper that refused to appologize for endorsing George W. Bush twice for president, even though the vast majority of Americans and Alabamians, Republican and Democrat, now realize reelecting him was a huge mistake.
Is it any wonder the paper is losing circulation and the community’s respect?
Stay tuned for our series on the Jill Simpson affidavit story. It’s a doozy.
It will take some time to put it all together and publish, but we expect to have the whole story out well before the June 26 sentencing date.
Here’s a hint: It would be a travesty of justice for Siegelman and Scrushy to be sent to prison for the rest of their lives by a judge who is far richer than Scrushy and far more corrupt than either one of them. If Fuller doesn’t recuse himself from sentencing, he is opening a can of worms that could well lead to the downfall of some of his closest benefactors, including Rep. Terry Everitt of Enterprise, Sen. Jeff Sessions and Sen. Richard Shelby, Gov. Bob Riley and his son Rob Riley, who still harbors major political ambitions.
