While he may have been guilty of some political misjudgment, it seems that former Senator Ted Stevens was brought down not because of wrong-doing but because of a reckless, politically motivated prosecutor.
Cheers for the judge, who deserves a hand for stating the obvious: this matter of partisan politics being played out in the courts is out-of-control. Time to reign in the real bad guys.
I’m getting tired of false charges and public trials. Are you?
Er, just because the trial was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct does NOT mean that Stevens wasn’t guilty as hell. (The tapes show him openly sneering at the laws he was breaking.)
It means that the prosecutors broke the rules, too. The term in American jurisprudence is “got off on a technicality.”
This is the same sort of thing that happened to Oliver North and Adm. John Poindexterl, who were found to have given “immunity” testimony before congress that part of their convictions was based on.
Again, guilty, guilty, guilty. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right, and Stevens wasn’t “exonerated.” More like the other “team” was forced to forfeit the match.
OK, I can see your point. However, Mr. Stevens remains an innocent man, correct? No conviction on his record. In any event, I hope this has some chilling effect on prosecutors seeking anything other than justice.
In response to your poll question, yes I’m tired of public trials. I think it would be much better to have trials in secret again w/o juries and all that other nonsense, like due process. Make things more efficient. Or maybe what we’re really sick of is the fact that the each news organization overloads us with “in-depth” stories as it vies with its competitors for viewer-/readership. Perhaps we also secretly long for the days when news took longer to travel, as opposed to the instant “news” we get through television, radio and the internet.