Says if he is Guilty, Governors Like Rick Perry of Texas Could be Jailed Too

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

We Will See

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.

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Glynn Wilson

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.”

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Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman appears on Fox News today discussing HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy…

The governor got in a couple of good points saying that Scrushy would be a free man today if he had agreed to testify against Siegelman.

“He could have thrown me under the bus any time he wanted to and walked out of that courtroom a free man. Richard Scrushy is in prison today for something he absolutely did not do.”

Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

After spending a good part of the day Tuesday studying the U.S. attorneys response to the motion for a new trial filed in federal court by former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy, I re-watched The Other Boleyn Girl film on Encore last night.

As many long-time readers will remember, we spent a good bit of time and space back during the Bush years showing parallels between American democracy then and European monarchy in the days of Henry VIII as well as King George III.

So what’s the lesson for today?

There is a great and telling line in the film that should help readers understand where we are today in American law.

Elizabeth Boleyn, the mother of Mary and Ann Boleyn, is arguing with her husband Thomas about sending Ann off to exile in the French court, while offering up Mary as a mistress to King Henry. She is trying to convince her husband that the family’s rise to wealth and power by courting the king will end badly, but he is too greedy to listen.

When Thomas downplays her assertion that the head of the previous resident of their new palace is now resting on the end of a stake, he counters by saying yes, but “he committed treason.”

“What is treason,” Elizabeth asks, “but whatever the king and his lawyers say it is?”

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Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy…
– A Bobby McFerrin song

The rain is coming down steadily in The Ham. But that’s OK. I’m dry in The Bunker and it’s good for the garden anyway.

Don’t worry. Be happy…

Some of my Facebook friends think I should join the crowd with the snappy, happy news, like Mike Royer, Pam Huff, Southern Living and the Newhouse boys, who of course write their columns four days before the paper comes out anyway…

And Dog knows I want to, since Bush is gone back to Texas and The Obama is in the White House and all’s right with the world, right?

Not so fast.

According to New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush, and neither can we until we get some unfinished business out of the way.

What prompted me to think about this today was an exchange I had this week on Facebook, the newest, most trendy, don’t worry be happy social networking Website, where I swear the programmer geeks who created it should adopt the Bobby McFerrin song as their theme song.

What they won’t tell you is that George H. W. Bush tried to use the song in the 1988 U.S. presidential election campaign until McFerrin, who was a Democrat, objected and the campaign desisted.

Oh, how soon we forget.

But don’t worry. Be happy…

While I love Google myself, if I were teaching again I would tell my students you can’t depend on Google for everything.

Here’s an example that fits right into today’s theme.

For some reason, my biggest critics on the Web tend to be engineers. Now back when I was pursuing a research academic career, one of my main professors used to make fun of engineers by calling them jarheads. Why? Because among pure research scientists, engineers are sneered at because they are involved in the so-called “practical science.”

But like a lot of things during the Bush years, that meaning got distorted when the movie Jarhead came out in 2005, depicting a company of marines calling themselves jarheads.

Not surprisingly, the sound track to the movie contained the song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Now there is a host of communications research which shows a certain and fairly large segment of the public likes this snappy, happy news, which is why local television news broadcasters started smiling and laughing at each other on TV starting in the early 1980s. Prior to that, network TV news broadcasts were usually somber, straight news affairs. Anyone here old enough to remember Huntley-Brinkley?

Now, the silly local broadcasters will smile at the camera, even when they are reporting that several marines died in Iraq today. The jarheads…

Newspapers started picking up on this a number of years ago, which is one of the reasons that’s what you get when you pick up a Newhouse paper like the Birmingham News. Even when they are delivering bad news, the tone is still snappy and happy.

I had the opportunity to do some reporting for one of the Newhouse papers considered to be the best in the chain when I worked for a time in Washington, D.C., back in 2004 and 2005. I did some free-lancing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but the deal went sour when the DC bureau editor wanted me to produce some snappy, happy news about the latest campaign finance reports about members of Congress from Ohio, including Dennis Kucinich.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t see much humor in campaign finance reports. I stayed up very late one night analyzing the reports and wrote a story which I thought did them justice. But the editor was terribly distraught when he read my report. The paper used the AP story instead of mine. Why? Because the editor said, and I swear I’m not making this up, “We don’t want analysis. We just want something short and snappy and funny…”

Right. Sorry, but that’s not why I got into journalism.

For a local example from today’s Newhouse news, take this piece of so-called business reporting. It’s actually a pretty interesting tale about Richard Scrushy and his country band Dallas County Line, but to those of us who know the whole story, there are several things missing.

Where is the criticism of the Bush appointed prosecutor? And where is the admission that the Birmingham News made a fortune on advertising from Scrushy’s Healthsouth, before the editors and publisher lost money on HealthSouth stock along with everybody else in Mountain Brook who were taken in by it?

If you want to see some real, substantive reporting about the Siegelman-Scrushy cases, this week you have to turn to the Huffington Post, where a guy I know named Andrew Kreig has a report under the headline (my headline anyway):

Siegelman Deserves New Trial Due to Judge Grudge

I met Mr. Kreig in Atlanta on the day of the appeal hearing in Atlanta. He showed up with a binder full of printouts of all my stories on the Siegelman-Scrushy cases, and we had an interesting lunch talking about it all. His report is the result of his substantive investigation over a number of months, and it is a piece of investigative journalism worth catching.

Be forewarned, though. It’s not snappy, or particularly happy.

Of course the Alabama bureau of the Associated Press came out with an almost celebratory piece of reporting this week, saying what we already reported would most likely be the case before the all Republican panel of judges who heard Siegelman’s case on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Siegelman, Scrushy Lose Bid for Full Court Review

The Newhouse reporter in Washington managed to break this little sentence of news this week at al.com, based on a leak, of course, from you know who: Obama to Replace Alice Martin With Joyce Vance?

And this came a little while later on a liberal blog: Bush U.S. Attorneys To Be Replaced in ‘Next Couple of Weeks’

Now that’s happy news.

But these items are not.

Politics As Usual On Siegelman Appeal?

Prosecutors Want Longer Sentence for Siegelman?

So sorry to be the harbinger of bad news today, but I hope you will agree that we delivered it in a snappy, happy way.

Don’t worry. Be Happy.

The world’s going to end in 2012 anyway.

Right…

Only snappy, happy news, please…

by Roger Shuler

An article in Sunday’s Montgomery Advertiser reveals that Alabama Governor Bob Riley apparently has committed a federal crime — not once, but twice.

The article, by reporter Sebastian Kitchen, was meant to provide details about the two political parties’ financial condition heading into Alabama’s 2010 election.

But Kitchen, perhaps inadvertently, reveals that Riley appears to have violated federal bribery and honest-services fraud statutes. Riley certainly committed crimes if the Don Siegelman case is to be believed as the law of the land.

Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, and co-defendant Richard Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth, were convicted on federal corruption charges in 2006. At the heart of the case was a transaction where Siegelman accepted $500,000 from Scrushy for an education-lottery campaign and then appointed Scrushy to a position on a state health-care board, where he had served under three previous governors.

Now, let’s take a look at what Kitchen reveals in his reporting about the Alabama’s GOP’s swelling coffers.

First, Kitchen states that Riley is chairman of the Alabama GOP’s Campaign 2010 fund-raising effort.

Then, comes this nugget about Raymond J. Harbert, CEO of Harbert Management Corporation in Birmingham: Some of those donors to the Republican Party include Raymond Harbert of Birmingham, who Riley appointed to the Auburn University board of trustees as an at-large member in March 2009. He donated $10,000 in 2008.

Let’s review that information briefly. Harbert made a donation to a fund-raising campaign, chaired by Riley, and then was appointed by Riley to the Auburn University board of trustees.

But that isn’t the only curious transaction in Kitchen’s story. We also have this regarding Birmingham physician Swaid Swaid: Dr. Swaid N. Swaid, who Riley appointed to the Certificate of Need Review Board, donated $5,000 in 2008.

Again, let’s review. Swaid gave to a campaign chaired by Riley and then was appointed by Riley to a spot on the Alabama Certificate of Need (CON) Review Board.

Both of these transactions sound an awful lot like the alleged crimes in the Siegelman/Scrushy transaction, do they not? And Swaid even was appointed to the same board to which Scrushy was appointed.

A devil’s advocate might point out that there was no proof of a quid pro quo in Riley’s transactions with Harbert and Swaid. But a student of the Siegelman/Scrushy trial knows that a quid pro quo was not shown in that case either, and U.S. Judge Mark Fuller’s jury instruction did not require one.

A devil’s advocate might also point out that the amounts of Harbert’s and Swaid’s donations were not nearly as large as the one from Scrushy. But if memory serves us correctly, the amount of the donation was not an overriding factor in determining whether a crime took place in the Siegelman/Scrushy case.

Finally, the donations apparently went to the Republican Party, not to Riley personally. But that also was the case in the Siegelman/Scrushy matter.

Scrushy currently is in federal prison, and Siegelman might be heading back, because Siegelman received a donation from Scrushy and then appointed the CEO to a state board.

That is exactly what appears to have taken place with Bob Riley’s donations from Raymond Harbert and Swaid Swaid.

Roger Shuler is a veteran legal journalist. This article appeared first in the Legal Schnauzer blog. He and I are in the process of teaming up to build the alternative, independent Web Press in Alabama. If you like to see these stories you will not see in the so-called mainstream press in this state and want to help fund this effort, consider making a large or small donation today.

by Glynn Wilson

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy are asking the full 12-judge Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to rehear the appeal in their political prosecution primarily on the basis that the alleged quid pro quo bribery claimed in the case was based on evidence of an “implied” agreement, not an “explicit” agreement.

“We filed today asking the 11th Circuit to rehear my case because we believe if their ruling, if left to stand, prosecutors will be able to pick and choose their targets among contributors and elected officials,” Siegelman said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the McCormick case made it clear, he says, that in this area of First Amendment rights, before a jury could convict an elected official or a contributor on bribery there had to be an “explicit” not an “implied” agreement.

“My three judge panel has allowed my conviction and my seven and a half year sentence to stand basically by defining ‘explicit’ to be something that can be inferred or implied by the jury form the mind and actions of actors,” he said.

“Yes, this is about my personal freedom but it is even more important this First Amendment issue clarified so the law wont be a trap for the unwary,” he said, citing Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote: “Whenever the people see things that are wrong the people can be relied upon to set those wrongs to right.”

“We need to get a message to the U.S.Department of Justice to help get this wrong set right,” he said. “If the three judge panel’s new definition changing an ‘explicit’ to an ‘implied’ quid pro quo is allowed to stand not only am I up the creek without a paddle but federal prosecutors will be able to pick and choose contributors and elected officials seeking convictions based solely on a jury’s view of what was in the minds of the elected official not based on any express communication.”

“After having gone through this unbelievable episode in our lives,” he said, “I had an opportunity to re-read The Federal Prosecutor, a speech by the U.S. Attorney General at the time, Robert Jackson. Just read the first paragraph and you’ll get a flavor of what my family has been through and what I ask you to help guard against.”

Siegelman said 11 of the 12 judges decide whether a full court hearing is justified. He said three of the judges have recused themselves in this case, including Republican Bush appointee William Pryor, the former attorney general of Alabama. That leaves 8 judges to make the decision. Three of those have already voted to uphold the conviction, so he says it will require five of five votes to order a new hearing.

Legal experts say the full appeals panel rarely overturns three judge panel decisions en banc, the legal term for the full court. So this is likely headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. Whether they will agree to hear the case is anybody’s guess.

You can read the appeal motion filed in the case here and the appendix here.