http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from staff who work at the private Wackenhut Mental Facility West of Meridian near Lost Gap. Wackenhut is now owned by a UK corporation, I was told.

http://www.privateci.org/mississippi.htm#East Mississippi Correctional Facility

Chief Martin did not appear as a witness before the committee, but he could be seen sitting in the gallery as the C-SPAN cameras panned the audience.

I always felt that McCain was protecting Abramoff.

Now what was the name of Senator McCain’s bus when he was on the campaign trail?

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg174/tr_gentry/lamptonweb1.jpg

The reference to “fingerprints” in the video is the prosecution’s hearsay claim that Traficant accepted $2500 monthly bribes from Allen Sinclair, an aide to Traficant. The bribes were allegedly slid under Traficant’s office door.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8wzIhw014Y

The 42 U.S.C. § 1982 decision: In addition to entering judgment on its findings of negligence, the circuit court also sua sponte found the Commission to be in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1982. However, nowhere in any of the three complaints submitted by Daniels Real Estate or WJZD was such a claim raised. This Court does not find in the record before it any indication of an amendment to the pleadings that includes this claim, or of any indication that the Commission was on notice of such a claim. We have nothing before us to show that the Commission ever had the opportunity to offer evidence on its behalf.

¶ 22. The trial court committed reversible error in finding that the evidence supported a judgment that the Commission violated § 1982. That section states: “All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” A careful review of the record reveals no evidence before the trial court from which it could conclude that the Commission’s conduct was in any way motivated by an intent to racially discriminate against the plaintiffs. The mere facts of the racial composition of Daniels Real Estate or WJZD, and the Commission’s determination that Daniels was in breach of the deed’s construction obligations, simply are not sufficient proof of a § 1982 claim, and we reverse and render judgment in favor of the Commission on that issue.

Nothing quite like a sua sponte § 1982 judgment vs. your client to give your day that added special something.

And, given the efforts of Minor to keep the loans secret, the weird choice of a bench trial in Marks’s case, and the spectacle of Teel, a debtor to People’s Bank, not recusing himself (or even putting the parties on notice) in a People’s case … the jury probably had an easier time finding the way it did.

(FWIW, I’ve read the briefs in Marks, and it certainly sounded at the least like he had a case to take to the jury. But it damn sure should not have been John Whitfield sitting as finder of fact.)

So the key question in the Minor case was this: Did Teel and Whitfield actually rule unlawfully, and corruptly, in the two underlying cases? As we have shown in multiple posts, they did not

* During the period covered by the indictment, roughly 1998 to 2003, Paul Minor’s firm filed 728 cases. Out of all those cases, how many did the government’s 30-some agents find that they could build their case around? Two.

* You heard that right. Two cases out of 728 raised enough questions for the government to build an indictment. And we already have written extensively about those two cases–Archie Marks and Peoples Bank.

* Marks was a personal-injury case, where a roustabout suffered a disabling back injury while working on an oil rig. The company in charge of the oil rig clearly was negligent in failing to provide safe working conditions, even though it holds a particularly high burden under maritime law to protect workers who are vulnerable because they are working offshore. The evidence is overwhelming that Judge John Whitfield ruled correctly based on the facts and the law in the case, and therefore was not influenced by any alleged “bribe” from attorney Paul Minor.

* Peoples Bank was a bad-faith insurance case, where a Biloxi bank sought coverage from USF&G. In an almost identical case at the time, another Mississippi judge had found that USF&G was obligated to provide coverage. That judge, in a case that did not involve Paul Minor, was not indicted; Judge Wes Teel, in a case that did involve Paul Minor, was indicted. The Mississippi Supreme Court eventually ruled that USF&G did not owe coverage, setting new legal precedent. But at the time of his ruling, Teel clearly was within established Mississippi law. Just as in Whitfield’s case, Teel ruled correctly based on the facts and the law at the time, and therefore was not influenced by any alleged “bribe” from attorney Paul Minor.

Teel and Whitfield ruled correctly based on the law and facts before them, so Paul Minor and his firm received no unlawful benefit in those cases. . .

. . . In the Minor case, the Fifth Circuit overturned the bribery convictions but upheld honest-services fraud convictions. In the Siegelman case, the 11th Circuit did just the opposite–it upheld the bribery conviction against Siegelman but overturned the honest-services fraud conviction.

What does this tell us? We can only conclude that there is a concerted effort in the federal judiciary to hide the true skulduggery that took place in these two cases.

Defendants in the Minor and Siegelman cases might eventually be set free. But that will not answer this critical question: How on earth did they wind up in prison in the first place?