Now That’s More Like It!
By Mark on Elephants
Decision '08
Tom Delay has gone on the offensive against Ronnie Earle with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct:
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The DeLay legal team’s motion yesterday alleged that Earle and his staff, after realizing that the initial indictment of DeLay on Sept. 28 for conspiracy lacked a credible legal basis,
“engaged in an extraordinarily irregular, and desperate
attempt to contrive a viable charge and get a substitute
indictment”
— namely, the allegation of money laundering.
The motion said that in so doing, Earle and his staff first improperly “attempted to browbeat and coerce” a second grand jury into bringing the new charge. It said that after failing to do so, they tried “to cover up and delay public disclosure” of the decision by the second grand jury.
The motion further alleged that Earle and his staff then “unlawfully incited” the foreman of the first grand jury, John Gibson, to speak openly about the case “in an effort to bias the public and sitting grand jurors” in Texas.
It said Earle and his staff then spoke with members of the first grand jury and solicited their opinion of “what they might have done had they known” the indictment for conspiracy had no legal basis.
The motion asserted that the jurors’ answers to this question constituted the “additional information” that Earle said this week he had obtained last weekend and presented to a third grand jury on Monday, which in response voted to indict DeLay on the money-laundering charges. According to the motion, the views of former grand jurors are “not evidence” and using them before a grand jury violates the Texas criminal procedures code.
Earle’s office, asked to respond to the new DeLay motion, issued a written statement saying that “these claims have no merit.”
“Because of the laws protecting grand jury secrecy, no other comments can be made,” the statement said. “The investigation is continuing.”
Earle’s spokesman, Rudy Magallanes, nonetheless went further, saying flatly that “there is no truth to these claims.”
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Do these allegations by Delay have merit? Far more than Earle’s indictment. I’m putting it at 5-2 that Delay never even has to go to trial…
decision08.net
washingtonpost.com |
