Master of a Lost Art: Part Two Interview with Glynn Wilson
September 6th, 2009by Joan Brunwasser
Welcome back for the second half of my interview with The Locust Fork News-Journal‘s editor and publisher, Glynn Wilson. So, Glynn, if, according to you, it takes a huge investment of time and energy to understand a story, that explains why the mainstream press has not done its job on many important stories. You, on the other hand, are eminently qualified to discuss the Siegelman/DoJ case. So, if Rip Van Winkle approached you and said, “Ever since I woke up, I keep hearing the name Siegelman. What’s up with this guy?” could you walk him through it so he would grasp why the Siegelman case is so significant?
Hmmm. Well, as you know from researching the case yourself, it is a complicated deal. It’s hard to boil it down to a sound bite for TV, but this is what I can say.
Like any politician, Don Siegelman is certainly no perfect human being. This may be hard for people who live in so-called blue states to grasp, but just identifying yourself as a Democrat in a red state like Alabama invites irrational attacks from the right. And in what I like to call “the Bush years,” they really didn’t care about the Constitution or the abstract concept called “the rule of law.”
People who believe the Bible fundamentally and get their news from Fox and Rush Limbaugh and conservative Big Mule rags like The Birmingham News don’t care about facts or the truth. Many of them still believe George Bush was “the man.” They didn’t get the OpEdNews memo.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind.
When Bob Riley stole the election from Siegelman in 2002 in the closest race in Alabama political history, (according to whistle-blower Jill Simpson, a Republican operative with close ties to the Rileys at the time) the Rileys threatened to use the legal system to investigate Siegelman if he ever ran again. So when he announced in 2004 that he would run again in 2006, the Karl Rove-Bill Canary political machine kicked into high gear to go after him. Canary’s wife, Laura Canary, the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, then launched the investigation of Siegelman.
Even though the career prosecutors in the Department of Justice could not really find enough evidence to bring charges, and told attorney Doug Jones nothing was likely to result from the case, a “top down” review of the case was ordered from Washington after Rove, Bush’s political adviser, had communications with people in the DoJ. That we know, even though the Birmingham News editorial page editors continue to deny it.
I have been asked numerous times by average people not on the hard right or left how it could be possible that the courts could be so corrupted in a case like Siegelman’s that politics would trump truth and justice. It is perhaps hard to fathom, but just ask Paul Minor in Mississippi or any of the U.S. attorneys who were fired on orders from the White House for not being politically loyal enough. Rove was a student of Machiavelli, who wrote and told King Henry VIII that kings either rule by love or fear. Bush was not the kind of man who inspired love, so he had to rule by fear by demanding absolute loyalty.
The point of prosecuting Siegelman was not about the law. It was about politics from the start.
Even if he had not been convicted, Siegelman would have lost the Democratic primary in 2006 because of the cloud of the case. He was convicted, but not by what I would call objectively a “jury of his peers.” In fact, and in contradiction to most newspaper and even AP coverage of the case here, at the end of the trial the jury was hopelessly hung and full of reasonable doubt. But the Republican judge, a Bush appointee, demanded a verdict by keeping the jury intact over the weekend and telling them he had “a lifetime appointment” and could wait for a verdict as long as it took.
Now anyone who has ever watched a trial, even on TV, knows that if a jury is given that kind of “dynamite charge,” chances are they are going to reach some kind of a verdict so they can go home to their families.
In this case, what happened was that the jurors went home and violated their oath not to read news coverage and communicate with each other outside the jury deliberation room. A couple of the jurors began reading the Mobile Press-Register‘s biased coverage online and sending stories around by e-mail, pressuring jurors to come to a guilty verdict: Explosive New Story Lends Credence to Siegelman Appeal.
That’s how Siegelman’s political career was ended and how he ended up in prison for nine months. He may end up back in jail again, unless the Obama Justice Department intervenes, which is why some Democrats in Alabama bent the ear of Attorney General Eric Holder on his recent trip to Birmingham.
Where does the case go from here?
Siegelman has an appeal up for consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court, and a motion under consideration for a new trial. There is no way to know whether the Supreme Court will even hear his appeal, since the 11th Circuit already denied it. And it is hard to imagine the same judge who locked Siegelman up the first time will grant a new trial.
There is still an ongoing investigation before the House Judiciary Committee, a criminal probe and a civil case that could impact the outcome. When or if this clear injustice will ever be corrected is beyond prediction. One can only hope and follow the case.
As for the fate of Richard Scrushy, Siegelman’s co-defendant, your readers should know that the people of my home sweet home Alabama don’t seem to care that he was convicted in the wrong case for the wrong thing. They hate him for how he mishandled the books and the stock at HealthSouth, and believe he should spend the rest of his life in jail and lose all of his considerable fortune.
Somehow the press in this country has failed to communicate what it means for people accused of crimes to receive due process and a fair trial. Maybe if we keep trying, we can get that point across on the Web Press.
One last question, Glynn: Why should anyone outside of Alabama, the South, or the Democratic Party give a fig about what’s happened to Don Siegelman?
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…”
Well said. I think that’s as good a place as any to wrap this up. Thank you, Glynn, for talking with me and for laying out the Siegelman case so clearly. We’re all lucky to have you on the job. I look forward to following your coverage on this and other issues in The Locust Fork News-Journal.
Cross posted at OpEdNews.com.
Tags: Birmingham News, Bob Riley, Democratic Party, Don Siegelman, HealthSouth, Jill Simpson, Locust Fork News-Journal, Master of a Lost Art: Part Two Interview with Glynn Wilson, Mobile Press-Register
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments