Paul Minor
How entrenched is the rot in our federal judiciary? How grotesque is the corruption and incompetence in U.S. courtrooms?
Those questions perhaps can best be answered by reviewing the Bush-era Paul Minor prosecution in Mississippi. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) now is considering a petition to review the Minor case and overturn the convictions of three men who went to federal prison for crimes they did not commit--in fact, for "crimes" that do not even exist under federal law. A decision on whether to review Paul S. Minor v. United States of America is expected any day from the high court. (The petition can be viewed at the end of this post.)
If SCOTUS refuses to grant certiorari in Minor, it will be giving tacit approval to the dismal state of our federal justice system. The situation is particularly dire in the Fifth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit, which stretch across the Deep South from Florida to Texas.
The Eleventh Circuit (Florida, Georgia, Alabama) is based in Atlanta, and its three-judge panel of right-wing nominees butchered the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. The Fifth Circuit (Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) is based in New Orleans, and it performed a similar hatchet job on the Minor case.
Portions of the certiorari brief in Minor describe the Fifth Circuit's actions in almost comedic terms. In fact, the appellate court's handling of the case would be downright laughable--if the stakes were not so high. Two citizens, former attorney Paul Minor and former state judge John Whitfield, currently reside in federal prisons because of convictions that are not supported by fact or law. A third defendant, former state judge Wes Teel, was released in 2012 after serving his sentence. A fourth defendant, former state judge Oliver Diaz, was forced to endure two trials before being acquitted both times.
Here is the gist of the appellant's argument in Minor: The bribery convictions already have been overturned, but the Fifth Circuit upheld honest-services fraud convictions; that ruling was incorrect based on the trial-court record, but it becomes doubly wrong in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in a 2010 case involving former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling. The high court found in Skilling that the honest-services fraud statutes apply only in cases involving bribes and kickbacks. The high court also used Skilling to establish a uniform national standard for honest-services fraud.
Where does comedy enter the picture? Well, even the government conceded in Minor that the ruling in Skilling meant the trial-court's jury instructions were incorrect. (The jury instructions actually were incorrect long before Skilling came down, but the 2010 opinion made them even more wildly off target.) So how did the Fifth Circuit uphold the convictions anyway?
Albert Alschuler, the criminal-justice expert who prepared the pending Minor petition, seems baffled by that one. This is from page 5 of the Minor petition for certiorari:
The Fifth Circuit's error was especially egregious because the government expressly and repeatedly waived any claim that the district court's instructions were correct. Prior to Skilling, Minor sought interlocutory review of a Fifth Circuit decision affirming some of his convictions and reversing others. After he filed his petition but before the government responded, this Court decided Skilling. Citing Skilling, the government then declared, "The [district] court's reliance on state law was incorrect because the honest-services statute 'establish[es] a uniform national standard.'"
The government went on to acknowledge that the instructional error was "plain." But that still was not enough for the Fifth Circuit to overturn clearly wrongful convictions. Alschuler adds this in his brief, perhaps to drive home the absurdity:
The government made the same concession in its brief to the Fifth Circuit. It did so again in oral argument, even after a panel member declared that she was "sort of appalled" by the government's concession.
Yes, a member of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said she was "sort of appalled" because the government admitted a point of law that was beyond dispute. That's what passes for "jurisprudence" in postmodern federal courts.
Is that all of the wackiness? Oh no, we have more.
(To be continued)
Paul Minor-SCOTUS Petition2 by Roger Shuler
