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

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.

Thanksgiving is an apt time for those of us enjoying family and freedom to reflect about those being prosecuted in the United States primarily for political purposes.

Let’s examine the Justice Department’s crusades against former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a Republican, and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, his state’s leading Democrat.

They are among those in the nation’s two million under lock-and-key who are punished far out of proportion to any offense. Victims include Siegelman’s Alabama co-defendant Richard Scrushy, a Republican businessman and father of nine imprisoned on a seven-year term solely because he donated to Siegelman’s favorite non-profit in 1999 and 2000.

Recent developments in the Kerik and Siegelman/Scrushy cases last week underscore the Obama administration’s shameful efforts to torment defendants, their families and whistleblowers at vast taxpayer expense, thereby extending and covering up previous abuses.

The Kerik Case

As context, the U.S. House last week censured former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel for tax and other ethics violations. The shame prompted tears from the New York Democrat.

But there is no report of a criminal investigation of the charges, which are arguably more serious than those that imprisoned Kerik last spring on a four-year term.

This holiday season, Kerik is in a Maryland federal correction center under a term that exceeds both his plea bargain agreement and federal sentencing guidelines. Meanwhile, his savings and other ability to provide for his wife and two young daughters has been destroyed by more than $4.6 million in legal bills, creating massive debt.

Each case is different, of course. But it’s obvious that Kerik’s prosecutors and his Democratic judge bullied him into his plea with abusive tactics that still infuriate Kerik’s largely voiceless and otherwise powerless 5,000 Facebook supporters around the nation, some of whom have contacted our Justice Integrity Project.

The pre-trial smears of Kerik by authorities have been so effective that JIP has found virtually no one in the mainstream media willing to cover the irregularities aside from the cutting-edge reporting of Geraldo Rivera at Fox News and the writers at Newsmax, along with several websites run by progressives and conservatives who are willing to reprint JIP’s material. Even experienced journalists take the position that a defendant who pleads guilty forfeits any review by journalists aside from routine coverage of appeals.

We have documented in Nieman Watchdog reports here and here outrageous tactics by authorities who jailed Kerik in pre-trial solitary confinement until he agreed to plead. Earlier, they smeared him pre-trial leaks to the press, stripped him of his attorneys, and secretly prevented him from obtaining exculpatory testimony.

Further illustrating the vast discretion wielded by authorities, the Obama administration permitted U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a former president of the New York Federal Reserve, simply to pay his $35,000 in back taxes upon his appointment. Geithner’s father had supervised the Indonesia work of Obama’s mother during the 1980s, and Geithner himself began his career at Kissinger Associates, the consultancy for longtime Rockefeller family retainer Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state. From there, Geithner has gone on to oversee much of the nation’s financial well-being, including collection of income taxes from the rest of us.

The Siegelman Case

Also last week, Florida federal judge Richard Hinkle continued Siegelman’s decade-long ordeal by postponing a ruling on whether the former governor’s trial judge, Mark Fuller, should have recused himself because of bias or the appearance of bias. Fuller, Alabama’s chief judge for the middle district, helped the Bush Justice Department railroad the former governor and Scrushy into prison, as shown by The Locust Fork News-Journal and others.

The DOJ claims not one reasonable person in the nation would think Fuller might be biased, a preposterous claim. The record in the Siegelman case is filled with grounds that require Fuller’s recusal. In fact, the law requires Fuller to make that ruling on his own. But he shuffled it off to another judge.

Our project’s Website is the only known public location for the 180-pages of evidence filed in federal court in 2003 calling for Fuller’s prosecution and impeachment for attempting to defraud Alabama’s retirement system of $330,000.

In 2003, courthouse staff in Montgomery removed the evidence from the federal electronic filing system, thereby keeping it secret from other litigants (including Siegelman and Scrushy attorneys). No evidence exists of the DOJ ever calling witnesses or otherwise examining the allegations against Fuller.

This is one of the irregularities that surfaced only after courageous Alabama whistleblowers stepped forward to document how the Bush DOJ convicted Siegelman and Scrushy on corruption charges in 2006. Alabama attorney Dana Jill Simpson, for example, swore in 2007 that she’d been on a planning call in 2002 whereby fellow Republicans described how they’d remove the governor from politics by an indictment. She later testified also how another well-connected Republican told her in 2005 that Republican insiders were arranging for their fellow Republican, Fuller, to try Siegelman because the judge “hated” Siegelman and would “hang” him.

After Simpson’s revelations about the 2002 call and Doss ownership the judge cleared himself from any bias. He then sentenced the defendants to seven-year terms, and had them hauled from court in shackles to begin serving their terms immediately without the appeal bonds normal for white collar defendants. Siegelman was put in solitary confinement. The imprisoned Scrushy, who had refused a deal to testify against Siegelman, has seen his fortune disappear from civil fraud litigation led by well-connected Alabama attorneys, including one of Siegelman’s criminal defenders who is influential also with the Justice Department.

The case has become an international human rights disgrace, with paramilitary overtones. The Bush DOJ created a special anti-Siegelman task force headquartered at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force base, where a trial team led by an Air Force reserve colonel that pressured witnesses with threats verging on blackmail, including exposure of homosexual activity if the proper testimony wasn’t provided at trial.

Prosecutors operated under the overall supervision of Washington’s Bush DOJ headquarters and Alabama’s middle district U.S. attorney Leura Canary, whose husband, led the campaign for Siegelman’s gubernatorial rival Bob Riley. Remarkably, Obama has continued the Bush appointee in office.

As partial explanation for the extra-legal forces at work, JIP has tied the Siegelman prosecution to the projected $40 billion Air Force tanker refueling contract in a bidding war between Boeing and EADS North America, a subsidiary of the European manufacturers of Airbus planes. EADS has lined up support from Alabama’s powerful Republican congressional delegation by promising to build its parts assembly plant in Mobile.

The contract has been delayed for years. Earlier this year, Alabama Sen. Dick Shelby (R) put a hold on all Obama administration nominations to extract an Obama administration promise for fair consideration for EADS, a request made also by top European leaders seeking U.S. taxpayer funding for jobs and raw materials involved in the contracts. This month, the DoD disclosed that it has mistakenly distributed confidential bid data to unauthorized recipients, thereby requiring yet another postponement of the award.

Regarding Siegelman, the Obama DOJ asked Fuller to impose 20 additional years in prison for the defendant, now 64 and free on bail. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder and Solicitor Gen. Elena Kagan resisted Supreme Court review of Siegelman’s case, but the court in June vacated most of his convictions pending appeals court review.

Meanwhile, Holder has stepped up law enforcement against whistleblowers. Also, all three of DOJ’s major internal investigations of misconduct (political prosecutions, torture and hiding evidence in the prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens) have absolved government personnel of criminal liability.

Summing Up

At this time of thanksgiving, those of us who remain free can at least be grateful our system permits us to remember in these ways all of our political prisoners and their long-suffering families.