I didn’t say “ruled from the bench.” I said “…pretty much ruled from the bench”.
Since they ordered her release within hours of these arguements, without even waiting to issue a written opinion, that is an accurate description.
Here is a local news story about the timing of the ruling.
Ok, whee does all YOUR expertise come from?
Well, from being an attorney and making arguments before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, you freakin’ douche. Who are you, an appeals court judge?
Who the fuck are YOU to start throwing around personal insults?
Good grief, you could hear that one male judge make a theatrical sigh at least three times, come on!
That was my error, thought we we had been moved to the pit. My apologies sir/madam. And, btw, I am me.
If you are right, it is probable that the judges had been unimpressed with the government’s case from the briefs they reviewed prior to the arguements. The oral arguements then reinforced that dim view.
Unless your claim is that they simply decided to do what they did regardless of any and all facts?
It happens, friend. I mean, a jury presumably sat through days of testimony and evidence presentation, and found her guilty.
Thank you, that worked perfectly.
You know, although I am totally “ignoran(t) of the process”, I am still stunned that this poor woman was actually sent to jail (since November) and faced the prospect of more than another year there. Good lord that’s frightening.
As cut and dry as the arguments seemed on the mp3 link, I would have to wonder about the competence of the defense attorney(ies) at the original trial. Did the original defense team make the same points that the appeal judges made in their questioning?
Regardless, I think this shows once again that the process of law is almost always flawless. The problem is with the processors!
No, no no no. This MP3 is nothing, I say, nothing! There is an entire series of events prior to it that really count, to argue that these judges heard 26 minutes of oral arguments from two people who did not witness anything and based their decision on same is horrible, can you not see this??? Come on people! Again, unless the jury was excused, a jury convicted her!!! It heard DAYS of testimony, and CONVICTED HER!!! This doesn’t count for something?
Um… people are sometimes wrongly convicted. Hence the overturning. Since it appears to have been unfounded.
I’m confused; I found the prospect of listening to all that oral argument daunting, but I did check out the articles, and the most sympathetic of them make the defendant look pretty damn guilty; what am I missing?
Really, the tape lays it out pretty well:
She was one of seven on a committee that scored contract bids. She had no individual power to control what contract was selected.
She made some questionable statements to her co-committee members like, “My bosses won’t like it if some other company is selected”. This resulted in nothing – no one changed their score.
There was no evidence she knew that the bidder she favored had donated money to the governor’s campaign in the past, or planned to do so again in the future.
Those campaign contributions were entirely legal, which is not disputed by the prosecution.
At worst she used questionable judgement while trying, unsuccessfully, to convince others to support her choice. Another bidder received a slightly higher (but statistically insignificantly different) score, but the company she favored won the contract. However, it was the actual low bidder, and the contract decision was actually made higher up in the administration.
Until a writen opinion is realeased, it’s impossible to say if the court thinks no crime at all was committed, or possibly that the wrong person was charged. From the tenor of the questions, I would guess the former, but it is just a guess.
Another NY Times editorial about the case which notes something I had not known before. The US Attorney from Madison, where the crime supposedly occured and where the defendant lived and worked, did not prosecute this case. One swooped im from another jurisdiction.
That would seem to me to be extremely unusual, but I can’t say for sure whether this is true. It also suggests that, since the state AG and the county DA had also investigated and declined to prosecute, perhaps the resident USA did as well.
Since Congress is now going after JD emails related to this prosecution, there might be an answer to this. I can’t imagine there WASN’T some cross-talk about about case poaching from a neighboring jurisdiction.
Of course, it is possible that the local USA requested assistance because of a full schedule or some such. It is true that several state legislators of both parties have been convicted of one form or another of corruption in recent years.
why the 
?
The Seventh Circuit opinion is out, in PDF format.
To be accurate, Tammy is the first openly lesbian Congresswoman. There were other lesbians in Congress before her, they just couldn’t be open about it back in those days. Barbara Jordan of Texas is one who comes to mind.