AGs Demand Siegelman Review

Source: Harper's Magazine, harpers.org
April 22, 2009
By Scott Horton

Seventy-five former state attorneys general, Democrats and Republicans, have written to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that he personally review the file relating to former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. According to a report in today’s New York Times (as usual, the matter is not reported in the major Alabama newspapers, which championed Siegelman’s prosecution), the attorneys general cite

“gravely troublesome facts” about his prosecution that raise questions about the fairness and due process of the trial. “We believe that if prosecutorial misconduct is found, as in the case of Senator Ted Stevens, then dismissal should follow in this case as well,” the group said in the letter, which was organized by Robert Abrams, a former attorney general of New York.

The links to the Stevens case are numerous. The grave prosecutorial misconduct that led to the decision to overturn the Stevens conviction is virtually identical to the accusations in the Siegelman case. The charges are also sustained in the Siegelman case, as in the Stevens case, by a whistleblower inside the prosecution team. Moreover, the cases involve many of the same prosecutors, now themselves under internal Justice Department investigation for ethics lapses