Turning the Department of Justice into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party must have sounded good to Karl Rove when the idea was first proposed. Well, there is a very practical reason why the DoJ should be kept out of politics. In the end the DoJ is all about prosecuting people for breaking the law. Defense lawyers are smart, they work hard for their money. If a criminal defense lawyer can convince a judge or a jury that the prosecutor's motives aren't pure, he just might win his case.
This morning the LA Times is reporting that in a series of cases across the country defense attorneys have challenged or are challenging the motives of the U.S. Attorneys in bringing charges against their clients.
A good example involves Rachel Paulose up in Minneapolis. According to the LA Times article, last month:
Lawyer Daniel Gerdts won an acquittal in federal court in Minneapolis last month for a New York computer consultant who had been accused of bringing child pornography into the United States on his way back from a business trip to Asia.Another case involves charges brought by Bradley Schlozman against a Springfield, Missouri company and an Arkansas Democratic politician. That case is still developing. Knowing Bradley Schlozman's loyal Bushie reputation, I, for one, am anxious to see if Schlozman was pursuing justice or just the election of a Republican.
The defendant, who worked for a Japanese producer of adult videos, said he was hired to set up Web pages to market the videos and to search the Internet for pirated copies. He conceded he might have inadvertently downloaded child porn in the process of doing his job.
In court, Gerdts said prosecutors had failed to exercise proper discretion in bringing the charges. During his closing argument to the jury, he suggested a reason, alluding to published reports of upheaval in the office since Rachel Paulose had become U.S. attorney in 2006.
Paulose is believed to have gotten the posting with the help of Monica M. Goodling, a former Gonzales aide who recently testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution that she "crossed a line" by improperly allowing politics to influence hiring decisions at the Justice Department. Several senior prosecutors in the Minneapolis office resigned their management posts to protest Paulose's leadership.
The effect of Gerdts' courtroom remark was unclear. Government lawyers objected, and the judge told jurors to ignore the comment.
After the verdict, jurors said they did not believe the government's accusation that the defendant had intentionally downloaded contraband files.
As long as Alberto Gonzales is Attorney General, and as long as Karl Rove is pulling his strings, we are never going to know whether or not charges in politically connected cases are politically motivated. That might sound normal in a banana Republic, but it is no way to run America.
