Legal Schnauzer: Here's How An Appellate Court Cheated Don Siegelman

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Here-s-How-An-Appellate-Co-by-Roger-Shuler-090616-429.html

Here's How An Appellate Court Cheated Don Siegelman

by Roger Shuler

www.opednews.com

We are starting to see the fallout from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld most of the convictions against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and codefendant Richard Scrushy.

In the wake of that ruling, federal prosecutors asked that Siegelman be given a 20-year prison sentence, almost three times his original sentence of seven years. Then the full 11th Circuit denied an en banc review, essentially putting its stamp of approval on the earlier findings by a three-judge panel.

Given the possibly drastic repercussions of the appellate ruling, we should ask this question: Did the 11th Circuit get it right, under the law?

The answer, on multiple grounds, is a resounding no. And our review indicates that the same politics that permeated the Siegelman case at the trial level also infected the appellate process.

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Since the 11th Circuit's decision was released on March 6, I've spent considerable time studying its 68-page ruling and comparing it to the 84-page appellate brief filed by Siegelman's legal team. I've also studied many of the statutory and case-law issues raised in both documents.

My conclusion? The three-judge appellate panel, made up of all Republicans, butchered the ruling in a way that almost had to be intentional. I see no way that a group of judges could accidentally get a decision so wrong, on so many counts.

That means the politicization of our justice system is still going on, even though George W. Bush, thankfully, is in Texas and not the White House. It means that politicization of our justice system goes beyond the schemes of Karl Rove and pliant prosecutors. It goes beyond corrupt trial judges, such as Mark Fuller in Alabama (Siegelman/Scrushy case) and Henry Wingate in Mississippi (Paul Minor case).

It also goes to our federal appellate courts, which are superseded by only one court--the U.S. Supreme Court. Given that the nation's highest court hears only a tiny portion of cases brought before it, the last real hope for most wronged parties are the appellate courts. That would be the U.S. appellate courts for federal cases and the state supreme courts for state cases.

The Siegelman case might be an exception. On the surface, it appears to raise questions that might be worthy of the Supreme Court's attention. But it never should have gotten that far. Any questions, in reality, have been created out of thin air by a corrupt trial court and now by what appears to be a corrupt or incompetent 11th Circuit.

The truth is this: The prosecution in the Siegelman case never should have made it to first base. That it would have to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to be correctly resolved is an absurd waste of resources.

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