A Day to Bare Our Souls - and Find Ourselves

PUNITIVE PATTERN OF INVESTIGATIONS? YA THINK?

Here's what seems to be my practically daily addition to the DUH News... you know, that newspaper with HAND, FOREHEAD, STAPLE plastered on its masthead?

Let me preface this by saying that personally, I see no one on either side of the aisle right now with the cajhones to do what needs to be done in this country. No one. Last night's Republican debate was a nightmare, and the Democrats are too busy posturing and pandering. I am disappointed -- and scared. Where's the leadership? (crickets chirping)

I often tell my friends, 'the older I get, the stupider everyone around me often seems.' Lately its the folks in charge!! The lunatics have taken over the asylum and we are just waking up to it. Sigh.

That said, I have never made any secret of my dislike of President Bush and his Administration. My gut said corruption from Day One. Sadly, I was right. And he and his cronies appear to operate a McCarthy-like Witch Hunt against anyone who disagrees with them. Warrantless wiretapping, data mining, firings, smear campaigns. Can I just say - UGH!

Some Ask if U.S. Attorney Dismissals Point to Pattern of Investigating Democrats
By ERIC LIPTON

When a jury acquitted Carl J. Marlinga, a former county prosecutor from suburban Detroit, of bribery charges last year, his initial reaction was to write off the episode as a terrible mistake that at least had been corrected.

“Prosecutors can make mistakes for innocent reasons,” Mr. Marlinga said. “I know that first hand.”

But as he looks back at the case, Mr. Marlinga, 60, who was charged while he was a Democratic candidate for Congress, no longer has such confidence in the integrity of the legal system.

“Was there some extra pressure on the United States attorney’s office, whether articulated or tacitly understood, by their superiors in Washington who would not look favorably upon the office if this case was not pursued?” he asked. “I have to wonder.”

That kind of second guessing has surfaced with increasing frequency in recent weeks in states including Alabama, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Since the dismissals of eight United States attorneys, local lawyers, politicians, editorial writers, members of Congress and defendants are questioning what they say is a pattern of investigating Democrats. They point to inquiries that drag on for years but end with no charges, an acquittal or convictions for relatively modest infractions.

The Justice Department does not keep statistics on the political parties of the subjects of its corruption investigations, officials said, so there is no comprehensive way to determine the breakdown or whether the cases disproportionately involve Democrats. Department officials point out that several prominent Republicans have been prosecuted in recent years, including former Representatives Randy Cunningham of California and Bob Ney of Ohio.

Some critics, though, are suggesting that the department dismissed some prosecutors to squelch corruption investigations of Republicans, while encouraging other prosecutors to go after Democrats.

“Democrats do occupy most public offices in Allegheny County,” Thomas J. Farrell, a former federal prosecutor in Western Pennsylvania, wrote recently in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, referring to investigations of the former Pittsburgh mayor, the sheriff’s office and the area medical examiner. “But are the Republican officials in the 24 other counties of the Western Pennsylvania District all squeaky clean?”

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, along with other senior Justice Department officials and prosecutors, has rejected the criticism.

“We’ve prosecuted members of Congress, we’ve prosecuted governors, Republicans, and so this notion that somehow we’re playing politics with the cases we bring, it’s just not true,” Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 19.

In Eastern Michigan since 2001, at least 21 Democratic public officials have been charged or linked to corruption inquiries, including the governor, the mayor of Detroit and several local officials, including Mr. Marlinga. Officials at the United States attorney’s office in Detroit identified one Republican who had been charged and said they did not have a list by party that would allow them to identify others.

Some of those Michigan cases resulted in convictions on significant charges. They included a member of the Pontiac City Council who pleaded guilty to taking a bribe from F.B.I. agents posing as local businessmen, a Detroit councilman convicted of fraud, and a former Wayne County official convicted of accepting gifts from a Detroit airport contractor.

On the other hand, several cases resulted in acquittals or no charges being filed, or convictions on relatively minor offenses. A Wayne County lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2004 to a misdemeanor charge, for example, used an intern to enter data on potential Democratic political donors for the pending governor’s race.

In Mr. Marlinga’s case, the State Republican Party and his Republican opponent in the House race filed complaints asking for an investigation. The charges centered on a legal motion by Mr. Marlinga, while serving his fifth elected term as county prosecutor, to the State Supreme Court in 2002 agreeing that it should re-examine a decade-old rape case. He had doubts about the case because an orthodontist who had appeared as an expert witness — testifying that there was at least a 3 million to 1 chance that a bite mark on the victim came from someone other than the suspect — had since been discredited. A second expert witness had recanted her testimony.

The testimony was crucial to the prosecution, and Mr. Marlinga said he felt morally obligated to notify the Supreme Court of his doubts. The convicted man was later acquitted, after the Supreme Court agreed that he should be retried.

But Mr. Marlinga’s request to review the case nearly ended his career as a lawyer. Several days before he filed it, he attended a holiday party where he solicited campaign contributions for his Congressional race, including a $2,000 donation from a real estate agent who employed the sister of the convicted man.

Mr. Marlinga knew that the real estate agent — who had no financial or family relationship with the rape suspect — believed that the man deserved a new trial. Mr. Marlinga said he saw no issue with accepting the donation, because he had decided months earlier to file the brief.

When Republicans learned of the contribution, they asked the authorities to investigate if it might have been a bribe. “It seemed to me it was worthwhile to take a look at this,” said Rusty Hill, then chairman of the State Republican Party.

Stephen J. Murphy, the United States attorney in Detroit since 2005, defended his office’s handling of the case. “There was no political calculus that went into that prosecution,” Mr. Murphy said in an interview.

When Mr. Marlinga testified, the case quickly fell apart, jurors said.

“It seemed like they were trying to build a case with really nothing to stand on,” Susan Kramer, a teacher in Rochester, Mich., said in an interview. Ms. Kramer said that she and other jurors thought Mr. Marlinga had been treated so unfairly that they wrote him a letter and invited him to dinner.

“We felt that he had really been run through the mill,” she said. “He deserved to know that we didn’t just feel that he was not guilty, but that he was truly innocent."

By then, Mr. Marlinga had long since lost his race for Congress, and stepped down from his job as county prosecutor.

Other cases across the country have also provoked questions. In Alabama last week, an editorial in The Decatur Daily asked if charges against former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman, a Democrat, were motivated by politics.

The state attorney general, a Republican, began an investigation of Mr. Siegelman weeks after he took office in 1999. The attorney general eventually teamed up with the United States attorney, who failed to convict Mr. Siegelman of Medicaid fraud. In 2005, after Mr. Siegelman had left office and was running again for governor, federal prosecutors charged him with taking bribes from the chairman of a hospital company in exchange for a seat on a state board that approves hospital construction.

Prosecutors did not show that Mr. Siegelman benefited personally from the money; it went to a campaign he set up to promote the creation of a state lottery to finance education. But he was found guilty on 7 of 33 charges, including one bribery count, a conviction he is appealing.

Tom Wright, executive editor of The Decatur Daily, said the case looked to him like a witch hunt against a Democrat. “Their conviction just doesn’t seem right,” Mr. Wright said in an interview. “It appears they were looking for ways to get him.”

In Wisconsin, the United States attorney, Steven M. Biskupic, has come under fire for bringing charges against a former state employee, Georgia Thompson. She was convicted on charges involving directing a state travel contract to a firm linked to Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat. But a three-judge panel overturned the conviction in early April, and freed her from prison. One judge called the evidence “beyond thin.” Six Democratic senators have asked the Justice Department to explain why it brought the case.

And in Pennsylvania, Democratic Party officials and Mr. Farrell, the former federal prosecutor, are questioning if Mary Beth Buchanan, the United States attorney there, has tried to impress her bosses in Washington by investigating Democrats.

Her office spent more than two years looking into whether former Mayor Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh, offered firefighters a favorable labor contract in exchange for their endorsement. After Mr. Murphy left office, Ms. Buchanan announced she would not indict him.

She did not pursue charges against a Republican state legislator, Jeffrey E. Habay, or former Senator Rick Santorum, when they were accused of wrongdoing, Mr. Farrell said.

Ms. Buchanan said the questions about Mr. Santorum — which related to where he claimed residency — have been referred to officials in Washington. More broadly, she said, Democrats outnumber Republicans by such a heavy margin in Pittsburgh it is only natural that more Democrats are the subject of investigations. What matters, she said, is that each case is handled fairly.

“Whenever wrongdoing is brought to my attention, it’s my job to investigate it and where appropriate, I will bring charges,” she said.

Barclay Walsh and Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting.




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