See the related story and a longer video at this story link:

Siegelman Says if he is Guilty, Texas Governor Rick Perry Could be Executed

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

SOUTHSIDE BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — They say it is a small world, but what do “they” know? I say the cliche is even more true today with modern social networking technology like Facebook.

I was just chatting with a blonde from Germany over my second cup of coffee in the Hippie Tree House, upstairs in the Hippie House on Birmingham’s Southside.

I crashed last night on the new couch in Hippie Stew’s place, and felt right at home. Maybe that’s because I was born five blocks from here in the old South Highlands Hospital, the first hospital Richard Scrushy purchased to create the outpatient and sports medicine empire known as HealthSouth.

Of course the place got famous after it was revealed that Scrushy and his team of financial officers cooked the books and over inflated the stock value and then crashed it, right after cashing in, of course.

Now Mr. Scrushy is in federal prison, while former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is still out on appeal bond.

One can’t help but wonder how many millions in cash Scrushy stashed in a Cayman bank account on that infamous boat ride from Florida the feds used in court to deny him release on bond, saying he was a flight risk.

Scrushy is now scheduled to reappear in federal court in Montgomery on Jan. 25, where he faces a resentencing hearing that will result in a reduction in the time he has to serve, since the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta knocked off a couple of the counts against him.

Siegelman was just back in court in Montgomery, still making the argument that the case against him and Mr. Scrushy was political from the start. He is right about that, as I have reported more times than I can count.

The feds failed to convict Scrushy in Birmingham, in part because the Bush appointed prosecutor in the case, Alice Martin, was more credentialed to be a Sunday School teacher than a U.S. Attorney. That’s the way things worked back in the Bush Years, when all a lawyer needed to get a job in the Justice Department was a Federalist Society membership card, a copy of their campaign contributions to Bush — and a letter of recommendation from a conservative preacher.

Now that Barack Obama is president, attorneys actually have to be qualified to get appointed to the federal bench and the U.S. attorneys office. Unfortunately, in Obama’s first term, not enough Bush-Cheney-Karl Rove hires have been run off fast enough, so the federal bureaucracy is still polluted with the presence of pro-big business conservatives. No wonder people don’t like guv’mn’t.

You can’t elect people who hate government and then expect it to work for people. When will my Southern brethren realize that? Maybe when they say it on Fox News, I guess, or when the bloggers at al.com write about it in the Birmingham News or “Birmingham Ruse,” as we like to call it in blogland.

Or, perhaps when we get more people reading The Locust Fork News-Journal, the world will become a smarter, more educated place.

Until then, Roll Tide Roll.

The number one and number two teams in the country are facing off today down in Tuscaloosa. You couldn’t get me anywhere near that crowd, but you know where my sympathies lie.

I was a junior and senior in Paul “Bear” Bryant’s last two years as head coach at Alabama, his last two years on Earth. Us liberal intellectuals don’t go hog wild for football, but if Alabama wins, perhaps it will be the game of the century. We will see.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery

by Glynn Wilson

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman says if he is guilty of bribery and corruption for being the fourth governor to appoint HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy to a hospital regulatory board — in his case allegedly in exchange for contributions to an education lottery campaign — then Texas Governor Rick Perry could be “executed” for what he has done in that state.

Mr. Siegelman made the comment after a hearing on Wednesday requesting more information from the federal government to form the basis of an evidence gathering proceeding that could lead to a new trial for himself and Scrushy.

“If they can put me in prison for nine months for being the fourth governor to reappoint Richard Scrushy, they ought to be able to execute Rick Perry for what he did in Texas,” Siegelman said (see video below).

“There is a standard of justice that should apply across the board and I think the United States Supreme Court will see that and will apply the rule of law in this case,” Siegelman said, talking to the media in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery after a three hour hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles S. Coody. “Rick Perry would be in prison today if this were the standard.”

He said the standard was changed in his case by the Bush Justice Department, because prior to his conviction in 2007, there had to be evidence of an explicit agreement for the courts to issue a conviction for bribery.

In his case, Siegelman said, “There was no evidence of an explicit agreement.”

Mr. Siegelman said if his conviction is allowed to stand, “every other governor and Bush and Obama too, and their contributors, could be subject to prosecution.”

He said the ruling in his case has already created a deterrent, or a “chilling effect” on the political process. People are going to stop contributing or politicians would have to start voting against their contributors, he said. “It turns the political system on its head and makes no sense.”

During the hearing, attorneys for Siegelman and Scrushy went back and forth with a Justice Department lawyer on two main issues before the court. Defense counsel are seeking a ruling from the judge to force the team of prosecuting U.S. attorneys to turn over more documents related to claims of “selective prosecution” and “judicial misconduct.”

Siegelman, a Democrat, has claimed all along that the case was brought against him to knock him out of the governor’s race against Republican Bob Riley in 2006, and there is much evidence to support that claim.

Many cases around the country were dismissed by appeals courts and even dropped by the Justice Department during the Bush years because it was shown that the Bush administration unconstitutionally used the court system as a political tool to win elections, directed by political operative Karl Rove out of the White House, even though the judicial branch of government in the U.S. is supposed to remain as isolated as possible from politics.

In Siegelman’s case, the initial investigation against him was orchestrated by U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, a Bush appointee who was married to a paid operative for Bob Riley, Bill Canary, the head of what is widely known as the “conservative” Business Council of Alabama. It is a pro-big business, anti-labor state chamber of commerce.

When confronted by lawyers making that claim back in 2001 and 2002, Ms. Canary issued a press release claiming to excuse or “recuse” herself from prosecuting the case once it came to trial.

But defense attorneys obtained documents after the trial was over, including e-mail messages between the prosecution team, demonstrating that Ms. Canary was involved in personnel and financial decisions in the case, as well as an e-mail from her suggesting that the court put Mr. Siegelman under a “gag order” so he could not talk the media.

Defense attorneys also argued that the prosecutors and members of the U.S. Marshall’s Service appeared to be guilty of “judicial misconduct” for inappropriate contact and communications with jurors, and that Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller acted inappropriately in his handling of that information when it was brought to his attention.

Judge Coody seemed skeptical that the evidence rose to the level of “prosecutorial misconduct,” but he also came down hard on the U.S. attorneys for not providing all the information to the defense team in a timely manner. According to knowledgeable courtroom sources, Coody has a reputation as a “fair” judge, and he seemed both knowledgable about the issues and the documents in the case and he listened to and challenged both sides.

When interviewed outside the courthouse after the hearing, however, Mr. Siegelman did not seem optimistic that he will be granted a new trial from the federal court in Montgomery. He indicated it will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the case.

“The Supreme Court has got to resolve this issue. They cannot let my ruling stand as is,” he said. “This is not the law in the United States.”

Related Coverage

Don Siegelman On Trial

Lori and Don Siegelman stand together outside the federal courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama, after a hearing on alleged “selective prosecution” and “judicial misconduct” in his case that traces its roots back to the late 1990s, when political operative Karl Rove was making a name for himself in the campaign world in Alabama.

In Siegelman’s e-mails he sends out to supporters and the press periodically, Siegelman points out that Rove first attacked Siegelman on the Bill O’Reilly Show on Fox News in March, 1999, about the time the first state investigation of the governor was being put together by former state Attorney General Bill Pryor, a Republican later appointed by President Bush to the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Here’s the advance story on Wednesday’s hearing.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman Back in Federal Court

A full story about what happened Wednesday, with video and more photos, is in the works for Thursday.

Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in front of the federal courthouse in Montgomery on a break from his sentencing hearing in June, 2007.

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be back in federal court in Montgomery again Wednesday, this time making an oral argument before a different federal judge asking for a chance to be heard on issues related to “selective prosecution” and “government misconduct” in the handling of his case.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday morning, Siegelman, a Democrat, told me his attorneys will be making an argument that former U.S. Attorney Leura Canary — the wife of Bill Canary, head of the conservative Business Council of Alabama — had a partisan conflict of interest in bringing the alleged bribery and corruption case against him.

They will be revealing documentary evidence that Ms. Canary never actually recused herself from the case, he said, an issue we have reported on extensively in the past. She recused herself on the pages of the Birmingham News, but never actually filed a formal recusal document with the court, and e-mail messages show she was involved in directing the prosecution team even after she claimed to recuse herself.

Evidence will also be presented about judicial misconduct on the part of Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller, who handled the case against Siegelman. Because of that, Siegelman said, Fuller will not be hearing the evidence on Wednesday. Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles S. Coody will be presiding.

Siegelman sent an e-mail message to supporters on Monday urging members of the public to show up for the hearing

“It’s open to the public, so if you can come, please do,” Siegelman said. “It just might help, and besides, I could use some friends right now.”

Siegelman said his attorneys have been asking for the government to produce documents which they have had in their possession since 2001, documents he says “will prove that while the U.S. attorney was preparing my indictment, her husband was being paid by my opponent, and that later the U.S. attorney’s husband ran my opponent’s campaign against me while I was brought to trial one month before the election in 2006.”

Mr. Canary was heavily involved in Republican Bob Riley’s campaign for governor.

“We have been asking the Department of Justice to turn over documents or make the local prosecutors give us these documents which we should have had at trial,” Siegelman said. “These documents prove selective prosecution, government misconduct, and show that witnesses were coached as to how they were to testify and other very serious misconduct by local prosecutors.”

Siegelman was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2007 for alleged bribery along with HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy for Scrushy’s contributions totaling $500,000 to pay off the debt on an education lottery campaign Siegelman promised voters when he was elected governor in 1998.

But he was released on appeal bond in 2008, and we have covered every detail of the case more than any other news organization or so-called “blogger” in the country. If you are just learning about this news Website, and want to know the truth about the Siegelman case, check out our extensive archives on the subject.

Siegelman said he was not sure if any other mainstream media outlet in Alabama would be there to cover the proceedings Wednesday, but The Locust Fork News-Journal will be there. We will have a full report as soon as possible after the hearing concludes, and that will include a video interview with Mr. Siegelman.

Related News

Scrushy was just turned down on a motion that he be released from federal prison on appeal bond.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller rejected Scrushy’s request that he immediately be released from prison, according to the AP, arguing that he has already served more than four years of his almost 7-year sentence. The request said his sentence is likely to be reduced further because a federal appeals court dropped two counts against him. The date for a new sentencing hearing has not been set in that case.

But according to AP, Fuller said that even with the dropped charges, Scrushy’s remaining sentence is within federal sentencing guidelines.

According to the Birmingham Business Journal, officials at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Complex have recommended that Scrushy be released in Dec. 2012.

Scrushy would be moved to home confinement at that time. He was initially scheduled to be released in June 2013.