“Maggi and I wanted to begin by thanking you and Marsha for a lovely and special lunch at the Mansion last Tuesday,” began a letter to the governor by the family friend of Doug Hindman, one pardon applicant. “It was very interesting to see the historical quilt upstairs.”
“Please tell Uncle Haley that one of my few talents is my ability to judge people,” read the letter on their behalf, sent to one of Mr. Barbour’s nephews at his lobbying firm in Jackson.
–Quotes from a couple of pardon applications highlighted in the New York Times look inside Gov. Barbour’s pardons. Kingfish has written about the Hindman pardon.
There’s also this:
Mr. Barbour declined to comment on the pardons, but a spokeswoman said that every application had been treated alike. “If you were poor or rich, you were told to go through the parole board process,” said the spokeswoman, Laura Hipp.
Well, yes, there’s a process. Did it turn out the same for everyone?
Finally, there’s a nod to this blog for writing about the Bostick pardon. I greatly appreciate the acknowledgment.
“Of all the pardons issued by Mr. Barbour, the case involving Harry R. Bostick, first disclosed by a blogger in Oxford, Miss., Tom Freeland, may be the most confounding.”
Nice hat tip from the NYT.
For all of the NY Times folks looking for NMC’s blog entry about Bostick, here it is.
Congratulations. Loved seeing your name in the NY Times.
A friend who read the story observed that if only the 10 or so in the story had “connections,” that is better than one might’ve expected. Out of 200?
If you go through the whole pile, the overwhelming majority do involve old crimes and statements that the pardon subject has lead an upstanding life since. But some jump out– you’ll hit one that leaves out the language of the upstanding life, or that is recent, and leaves out the boilerplate that the sentence was served, etc.– and it’s that smaller pile where the political connections start being really obvious.
There are still a lot of questions in my mind about the process– why this sudden change of policy and practice, who prompted it, what evidence is there that the desire was to produce a “haystack” to conceal some, etc. The big overarching question to me is what exactly Gov. Barbour was thinking– surely he wasn’t blindsided by the storm this created, and, if not, why wasn’t it prepared for?
Nasty question: What do you think the chances would have been, if this had been the last act of the Musgrove administration, that some Republican US Atty would have indicted someone as a result of all this?
assuming for argument your last sentence may have happened, indicted for what federal crime?
Nasty situation: Imagine representing the next deserving MS pardon applicant–Assuming the process continues-
Term, I guess the same federal crime that the former gov of Alabama is in jail for. It would make about as much sense.
Suppose a business executive made a political donation with the hope (never spoken aloud) that, should a state-sponsored project go sour, that donation would mean that a Governor (if reelected) would agree to a meeting.
That was prosecuted.
I find it hard to believe that a creative prosecutor who thought that a crime couldn’t find a way forward in some of the cases with this many cases with this many cozy connections. Which is a very, very different thing from saying that there are federal crimes here that ought to be prosecuted– I am not suggesting the later, just the former.
The Commercial Appeal prints The New York Times story today and spotlights the Bostick part.
On the bostick pardon (who was in jail for killing an 18 year old waitress while drunk at the time he received a pardon for his prior felony dui)does anyone find it sickining that the prosecutor on the Scruggs case got a political favor from a fellow republican to let out a former federal agent who had just killed an 18 year old girl in yet another drunk driving offense?
Stephanie: I don’t do subtleties or rhetorical questions. Which prosecutor? What favor? What fellow republican? What former federal agent?
Ben, it ain’t subtle. Here’s part of the finish of that NY Times story:
>>
Mr. Bostick, a former criminal investigator for the I.R.S., was sentenced in May 2010 for his third drunken driving offense — a felony — and ordered into treatment.
Several former government lawyers and law enforcement officers who worked with him on federal tax prosecutions submitted letters on his behalf. In one, a former United States attorney, Jim Greenlee, argued that Mr. Bostick had reversed his destructive course of conduct. “He now fits the criteria and meets the human factors that make his pardon a wise decision,” Mr. Greenlee wrote.
In October, Mr. Bostick, 55, was arrested again for drunken driving, this time in an accident that left an 18-year-old waitress dead. The waitress, Charity Smith, was working at Cracker Barrel to save money for college. On a Friday night, her Buick collided with Mr. Bostick’s truck.
Mr. Bostick was charged with his fourth D.U.I. On Jan. 10, he was pardoned for his prior felony D.U.I. by Mr. Barbour.
<<
He probably would have drawn a fourth DIU from the Pontotoc case– the girl killed in the accident pulled out in front of him, and I have to assume a prosecutor would be aware that a jury would have trouble parsing the legal distinctions here (if he was 1% liable and drunk, he’s technically committed vehicular homicide, but I don’t think a jury would see it that way unless he was close to 50% liable). With the pardon on the felony DUI, that may not be available.
But is it? Did the pardons reach the 2 prior misdemeanors (I’m not sure it did. But again, maybe too subtle a point…).
I’m aware of 1) aggravated dui – death or injury; and 2) culpable negligence manslaughter; but not “vehicular homicide” under Mississippi law. What’s you authority on the 1% liability, which I interpret as simple negligence on agg. dui. Has the MS appellate court’s addressed comparitive negligence as a defense? I am aware of the Lafayette County case a few years ago where the driver was drunk, but the “victim” stepped out in the highway right in front of the drunk’s car, but that was decided at the trial court level wasn’t it?
I was thinking about culpable negligence manslaughter, Terminator.
The case in Lafayette County was decided by a jury verdict, and I had it in mind when I made my comment.
If Joey Langston had called Ronnie Musgrove and said “Hey Ronnie, my old cigarrette investigator is in jail on a felony dui, and by the way he just killed an 18 year old waitress in ANOTHER dui, can you pardon him for me?
And then if Ronnie would have pardoned him, we all know that BOTH Joey and Ronnie would have been idicted by the SAME prosecutor who got the pardon for Bostick.
That aint theoretical either Ben
well, then, I don’t think comparative simple negligence by the victim would be a defense to gross negligence by the defendant. just sayin…
maybe it should be if it isn’t, but doubt that ruling ever comes down and hades will freeze before the legislature does it by statute.
Its one thing to say something “isn’t a defense” in the sense of jury instructions and another to say whether the jury would take it into account and make it all-but-a-defense, with defense lawyer encouragement (not encouragement to ignore the instruction, but implicit– the lawyer would get to say “this is how the accident happened” and emphasize the victim’s alleged negligence and then let the jury do the rest…).
Something like that seems to have happened in the Lafayette County case, with some effective defense counsel work.
They did a 2 minute update on the Pardons on Memphis Channel 5 news at about 8 a.m. this morning and highlighted the Harry Bostick case.