Hullabaloo

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

 
Principled Conservatives

by digby

Decorated Iraq war veteran Anthony Circosta seemed like an ideal candidate for a pardon from then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for his boyhood conviction for a BB gun shooting.

Romney said no — twice — despite the recommendation of the state's Board of Pardons.

At age 13, Circosta was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun, a shot that didn't break the skin. Circosta worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle.

In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

"I've done everything I can to give back to my state and my community and my country and to get brushed aside is very frustrating," said Circosta, 29, of Agawam, Mass. "I'm not some shlub off the street."

In his presidential bid, Romney often proudly points out that he was the first governor in modern Massachusetts history to deny every request for a pardon or commutation during his four years in office. He says he refused pardons because he didn't want to overturn a jury.

But critics argue that the blanket policy is an abdication of a key power given governors and the president — the ability to recognize how someone convicted of a past crime has turned their life around.

During the four years Romney was in office, 100 requests for commutations and 172 requests for pardons were filed in the state. All were denied.

"Governor Romney's view is that it would take a compelling set of circumstances to set aside the punishment and guilt resulting from a criminal trial," said Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom, who added he was not familiar with Circosta's case. "The power to pardon should only be used in extraordinary circumstances."

I'm afraid this Iraq war vet is a schlub off the street. The Mittster would only consider using the power of the pardon for someone a little bit more worthy:

BLITZER: I just want to do a quick "yes" or "no." And I'm going to go down the rest of the group and let everybody just tell me "yes" or "no": Would you pardon Scooter Libby?

ROMNEY: This is one of those situations where I go back to my record as governor. I didn't pardon anybody as governor, because I didn't want to overturn a jury.

But in this case, you have a prosecutor who clearly abused prosecutorial discretion by going after somebody when he already knew that the source of the leak was Richard Armitage.

He'd been told that. So he went on a political vendetta.

BLITZER: Was that a yes?

ROMNEY: It's worth looking at that. I will study it very closely if I'm lucky enough to be president. And I'd keep that option open.

But that slapping flip-flop is nothing compared to this one:

GIULIANI: I think the sentence was way out of line. I mean, the sentence was grossly excessive in a situation in which, at the beginning, the prosecutor knew who the leak was...

BLITZER: So, yes or no, would you pardon him?

GIULIANI: ... and he knew a crime wasn't committed. I recommended over a thousand pardons to President Reagan when I was associate attorney general. I would see if it fit the criteria for pardon. I'd wait for the appeal.

I think what the judge did today argues more in favor of a pardon because...

BLITZER: Thank you.

GIULIANI: ... this is excessive punishment.

BLITZER: All right.

GIULIANI: When you consider -- I've prosecuted 5,000 cases.

BLITZER: I'm trying to get a yes or no.

(LAUGHTER)

GIULIANI: Well, this is a very important issue. This is a very, very important -- a man's life is at stake. And the reality is, this is an incomprehensible situation.

They knew who the leak was.

ROMNEY: Hey, Wolf, can I explain...

GIULIANI: And ultimately, there was no underlying crime involved.

Oh, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, do you think we're stupid?

Rudolph Giuliani, who ran for mayor of New York City as a crimebuster, will be remembered instead as the federal prosecutor who made RICO famous. The law, passed as part of an organized-crime bill in 1970, had the sole purpose of strengthening the hand of prosecutors trying to lock up mobsters. One of the original proposals was a simple provision making it a crime to be a member of the Mafia. The Supreme Court frowns on so-called status crimes, however, so Congress instead tried to write RICO to cover the mob without mentioning it by name. It wound up writing the definition so broadly that almost any activity can become racketeering." All it takes is two "predicate acts" within ten years as part of a "pattern" involving a criminal enterprise." In other words, RICO violations are the American equivalent of the Soviet crime of hooliganism.

The Justice Department understood the risks of RICO well enough to send U. S. attorneys a separate set of guidelines for using it. Mr. Giuliani apparently never got his copy. The guidelines tell prosecutors not to bring "'imaginative' prosecutions under RICO which are far afield from the congressional purpose of the RICO statute," defined as "the infiltration of organized crime into the nation's economy." Prosecutors are also prohibited from using RICO to coerce a plea bargain or persuade a witness to testify. These safeguards are necessary because of the pre-trial powers RICO gives prosecutors, including the ability to get a court order freezing the assets of a target before trial.

The dry run for the Milken trial was the case Mr. Giuliani brought against the comparatively small securities firm of Princeton/Newport. The racketeering counts arose from end-of-year tax trades that prosecutors claimed were shams. No such case had ever been tried under RICO or under any other criminal statute, and there remains a good case that the trades were perfectly legal, but Princeton/Newport was apparently only a means to a greater end. A defense lawyer told a reporter that a prosecutor had told him: "We have no real interest in Princeton/Newport" except as a way to "get Drexel Burnham Lambert and others. We have bigger fish to fry and we will roll over you to get where we want to go."

Prosecutors deny the quote, but roll they did. They demanded pre-trial seizures of $23.8 million from the firm. Investors such as the Harvard endowment decided they couldn't risk having their investments seized, so they pulled out, forcing Princeton/Newport into liquidation before trial.

Rudy Giuliani is also the guy who invented the perp walk (after which he often dropped the charges for lack of evidence.) Romney wouldn't even pardon a war hero who had a blight on his record from when he was 13 years old. And both of these guys are whining and blubbering like four year olds about how unfair Patrick Fitzgerald was to pursue poor little Scooter.

These people can say and do anything and get away with it. Anything.


H/T joejoejoe


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digby 6/12/2007 04:15:00 PM |