Former House Majority leader Tom Delay gets conviction overturned!!!

[FJO]

Tom Delay`s greatest crime was pretending to dance while wearing bright red pants on an asinine and deplorable TV show.

 

[Politico]

Good for him.

 

[BullKurtz]

Prosecutorial vendetta......Delay never did anything illegal with pac money....at the time he did it. The prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, who failed time after time to indict him, finally found a court who would hear the case and what do jurors know about the legal finery in campaign finance in the first place? Delay's defense was simply that he hadn't broken the law. The jury was hoodwinked into believing he had. I remember leftist trash on another board whooping and hollering like a pack of ex-wives about his conviction. Now somebody better look at who brought all this about in the first place and ask for all Delay's legal fees be reimbursed....by Ronnie Earle instead of Travis County....loser pays.

 

[konradv]

This is highly unusual. The conviction was overturned on grounds of insufficient evidence!!! That almost never happens. Convictions are reversed only due to judicial error or jury misconduct. You have to figure the appellate court took a bribe or was intimidated in some way.

Are you saying Delay bribed or intimidated the court in some way? You're affirming that he is guilty of something then.

 

[Foxfyre]

If it's not money-laundering, why are corporations using a third party to transfer funds to candidates?

Because that's the only way they can give more than the cap on contributions. It has been done for decades now. The Corporation gives the maximum allowed by law and then gives the maximum allowed for each of its employees. How else can a corporation hope to buy a politician? But it isn't just corporations. Unions do it too as well as political action committees and other arms of political parties.

No amount of campaign finance reform will stop payola and buying of government favors until we make it illegal for government to give any favors in any form.

Unfortunately the folks who want big government to be big daddy are not even willing to look at that solution as a remote possibility.

But if we did, trials like Tom Delays would become a thing of the past as no crime at all would even be suggested, much less committed.

So, corporations are trying to hide the true source of the campaign contributions, but that's not considered money-laundering?

Not technically. No. It is a legal way to get around campaign finance laws to promote a certain candidate, and it is usually in hopes of getting some kind of favor from somebody when they are elected. Obama has spent most of his presidency using our money to pay off cronies. And if somebody plugs that hole, they'll just find another. It is money laundering only if it is money obtained illegally that is being transformed into something legal. The issue with Delay is the money wasn't illegal to begin with which is why Earle had to go through eight grand juries until he could badger one into indicting Delay on trumped up charges.

 

[TooTall]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

The ACLU helped get Ollie North off on a technicality. Read about it below:

I'm hardly surprised that you don't understand the reason Ollie North's conviction was overturned. The law that "prevents a prosecutor from using immunized testimony as part of a criminal case against him" is called "the Fifth Amendment." Read it. Perhaps you'll learn something.

BTW, it takes a special kind of stupid to believe that the prosecution team "isolated themselves" from knowledge of North's testimony. Walsh certainly didn't, and he was the head of the prosecution team.

Did you not read the enlarged highlighted part? I'll reprint it below:

While the defense could show no specific instance in which North's congressional testimony was used in his trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue. Consequently, North's convictions were reversed.

The only problem was that the "trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue." But no examples were offered where North's congressional testimony was used. The court just failed to address the issue even though North's testimony was not used. That's why it's a technicality.

I will enlarge the part that was important:

However, on July 20, 1990, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),[18] North's convictions were vacated, after the appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony.[19]

 

[bripat9643]

I'm hardly surprised that you don't understand the reason Ollie North's conviction was overturned. The law that "prevents a prosecutor from using immunized testimony as part of a criminal case against him" is called "the Fifth Amendment." Read it. Perhaps you'll learn something.

BTW, it takes a special kind of stupid to believe that the prosecution team "isolated themselves" from knowledge of North's testimony. Walsh certainly didn't, and he was the head of the prosecution team.

Did you not read the enlarged highlighted part? I'll reprint it below:

While the defense could show no specific instance in which North's congressional testimony was used in his trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue. Consequently, North's convictions were reversed.

The only problem was that the "trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue." But no examples were offered where North's congressional testimony was used. The court just failed to address the issue even though North's testimony was not used. That's why it's a technicality.

I will enlarge the part that was important:

However, on July 20, 1990, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),[18] North's convictions were vacated, after the appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony.[19]

In other words, the trial violated his 5th Amendment rights.

Thanks for playing!

 

[Mustang]

Somebody should start a thread which highlight the quotes of Tom DeLay who was, IMHO, not only corrupt in the financial sense of selling out his office for money from a myriad of sources, but who was also morally bankrupt, as well. I suppose that's why I took such offense when DeLay claimed he was attending a prayer meeting (or something similar to that) when he got the news of the Court of Appeals ruling.

At any rate, I have one of Tom DeLay's old quotes from a few years ago when those individual freedom-loving, small gov't Republicans, including the FL State Legislature, FL Gov Jeb Bush, the US Congress, and even President George W. Bush himself decided to interfere in the end of life decisions of Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, who had followed the FL court procedures to have her feeding tube removed since she had been effectively declared brain-dead due to being in a persistent vegetative state for a number of years.

Here's Tom in all his glory:

"Terri Schiavo is not brain-dead. She talks and she laughs, and she expresses happiness and discomfort."

 

[Roadrunner]

Or, there never was any evidence and the lower court was democrat.

Ronnie Earle was the DA is a pinko commie democrook sociopath, and managed to get that bullshit case in from of his fellow travelers.

Travis Co is loaded with such parasites.

Texas National Guard should do it!!!!