Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
The U.S. Supreme Court this morning vacated the judgment that upheld the convictionsof former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and codefendant Richard Scrushy, ordering the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case in light of last week's ruling on honest-services fraud.
What does it all mean? There is no simple answer to that question. But it probably means that Siegelman and Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth, stand a heightened chance of having their convictions overturned. It should mean that Mississippi attorney Paul Minor, and codefendants Wes Teel and John Whitfield, stand a significantly heightened chance of having their convictions overturned. And it means Siegelman supporters probably will want to bone up on a case called Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957).
On the down side, today's Supreme Court finding is, in a sense, a smokescreen. It might lead to long-delayed justice for victims of political prosecutions. But it does not address the real problem--that corrupt federal prosecutors and judges caused this grave injustice to happen.
From a Siegelman standpoint, today's ruling is filled with irony. That's because the 11th Circuit already has overturned the honest-services fraud convictions against him--although those convictions stand against Scrushy.
The issues remaining against Siegelman involve bribery and obstruction of justice. So how could last week's Supreme-Court ruling on honest-services fraud--involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling and former media magnate Conrad Black--help Siegelman?
Well, that's where the Yates case enters the picture. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the case in her majority opinion last week. And here is the key general finding in Yates:
Constitutional error occurs when a jury is instructed on alternative theories of guilt and returns a general verdict that may rest on a legally invalid theory.
It's undisputed that the Siegelman jury was instructed on theories involving honest-services fraud. But the U.S. Supreme Court has found that theory now is legally invalid. Yates states that such an instruction, in essence, "muddies the water" of a case and raises issues of constitutional error.
Here is the reference to Yates in Ginsburg's opinion in the Conrad Black case, which is styled Black v. the United States:
On appeal, Defendants urged the invalidity of the jury instructions on honest-services fraud. Under the rule declared by this Court in Yates v. United States, 354 U. S. 298, 312 (1957), a general verdict may be set aside "where the verdict is supportable on one ground, but not on another, and it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected." Relying on that rule, Defendants urged reversal of their mail-fraud convictions.
While this all sounds like good news for Siegelman and Scrushy, here is one major word of caution: Yates is subject to a "harmless error" analysis. In other words, on remand, the 11th Circuit could find that the invalid instruction on honest services did not have a major impact on the verdict. Given that the 11th Circuit already has proven unfriendly to the defendants in the case, that certainly could happen.
Today's finding definitely should be good news for the Minor defendants. That's because their bribery convictions were overturned by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and fraud is the central issue remaining. Based on the Supreme Court's new definition of honest-services fraud, the chances of those verdicts being overturned should be high.
On the down side, however, we do not even know if the Supreme Court will hear the Minor case, and Raw Story reports that a notice is not expected until October. Also, the Fifth Circuit, much like the 11th Circuit in the Siegelman case, already has proven unfriendly to the defendants.
That brings us back to the real issue in these cases: The district courts and circuit courts have acted in an abominably corrupt manner--and yet the Supreme Court keeps remanding issues back to courts that already have proven they can't rule lawfully in these cases.
Today's news is encouraging in the sense that the Siegelman and Minor defendants now stand a better chance of being freed. But they never should have been in prison in the first place. Ethical prosecutors, not under the influence of the corrupt Bush Justice Department, never would have brought these cases. Under the law, there was never any bribery or honest-services fraud from the outset. If prosecutors somehow did manage to bring the cases, ethical district judges would have kicked them out long before they ever reached a jury.
That's not just our opinion, by the way. We have written numerous posts that conclusively show that both the Siegelman and Minor cases were based on unlawful jury instructions and other wrongheaded rulings by the trial judges--Mark Fuller and Henry Wingate, respectively. Here are links to just a couple of many posts that show the convictions in both cases were unlawful:
How the 11th Circuit Cheated Don Siegelman: A Summary
The Paul Minor Ruling: More Evidence of Our Crumbling Justice System
Consider what these defendants have lost while corrupt prosecutors and judges played games with their lives. Just consider this curious timeline from the Siegelman case:
Conviction, June 29, 2006
Sentencing, June 29, 2007
Supreme Court Order, June 29, 2010
How ironic is that? Siegelman and Scrushy have lost four years of their lives--and that doesn't count all of the headaches they went through leading up to the trial. The same general time frame applies to the Minor case, although it has been even worse for those defendants. They had to go through two trials because the first resulted in a hung jury.
Paul Minor, in fact, has now served four years in federal prison. He was not allowed to attend his wife's funeral, nor the wedding of his only son.
All for alleged "crimes" that he did not commit--and, in fact, do not exist under the law. We say that because the Minor defendants were convicted on jury instructions that Judge Henry Wingate pulled out of thin air. They had little, if anything, to do with the actual relevant law.
Today is a step forward for justice in the Siegelman and Minor cases. But when will those responsible for these travesties be held accountable? And how will these defendants ever be made remotely whole?
Until those questions are addressed, justice remains a long way off.