Biskupic Proves Loyalty; Innocent Victims Suffer

[WillyT]

Biskupic proves loyalty; innocent victims suffer



<snip>

...Thompson was immediately freed by a conservative three-judge appeals court in an extraordinary legal move at the early stage of oral arguments. The judges expressed astonishment Thompson had ever been charged, let alone convicted. While it's rewarding to be vindicated and allowed to walk free after spending four months in prison, Thompson does so virtually penniless after having to sell her home and cash in her state pension to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses.

A less well-known casualty of Biskupic's need to prove he was "Bushie enough" to retain his job is Kimberly Prude, an African-American Milwaukee woman who has been jailed for more than a year for the crime of voting. You know a democracy is sick when the government starts prosecuting citizens for voting.

And...

To keep local Republicans happy on vote fraud, he could always imprison poor people few would care about like Prude. Prude's case was never even reported in the local media until the New York Times cited it last week in a front-page story about how five years of Republican claims about vote fraud had resulted in "virtually no evidence" of any organized fraud.

Prude's offense was typical of the sort of innocuous mistakes that Republicans turn into exaggerated claims of vote fraud. Prude was convicted in 2000 on a bad check charge. The charge didn't result in any jail time. She was placed on six years' probation.

Four years later, Prude attended a rally in Milwaukee to hear the Rev. Al Sharpton urge everyone to register and vote. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and did so. She later sent in an absentee ballot. When Prude learned from her probation agent that she wasn't allowed to vote because she was still on probation, she actually called City Hall and tried to rescind her vote. She was told that wasn't necessary.

But voting has now cost Prude something her original crime involving a fraudulent check never did. As a result of Biskupic's charge against her for voting, she has been in jail for more than a year for violating her probation.

<snip>

Link: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=130515&ntpid=0

This needs bigger exposure!

:mad:

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

1. K&R

[WillyT]

2. And THIS Is Interesting !!!

<snip>

In an opinion published last week, appeals court judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee who is one of the most right-wing members of the federal judiciary, called Thompson's conviction "preposterous." The three-judge panel of which Easterbrook was a part took the extraordinary step of refusing to merely reverse Thompson's conviction while remanding her case for a new trial (the normal remedy for serious prosecutorial errors). Instead, Easterbrook and his colleagues acquitted Thompson, and ordered her immediate release.

What this means is they concluded that even if every fact Biskupic alleged was proved beyond a reasonable doubt, Thompson would still be completely innocent of any crime.

Here's what seems to have happened to Georgia Thompson: She was framed for committing a nonexistent offense in order to provide a "scandal" that could then become the centerpiece of Doyle's opponent's campaign advertising - which is exactly what transpired. Biskupic, naturally, denies this.

Now it turns out Biskupic's name was on the list of U.S. attorneys the White House planned to purge, until it was mysteriously removed after he brought charges against Thompson. And there's more: In his zeal to find politically useful examples of "fraud and corruption" in the months prior to the 2006 election, Biskupic also imprisoned Kimberly Prude, an African-American woman who mistakenly cast an absentee ballot while on probation for writing a bad check. Prude, whose vote only came to Biskupic's attention after she called City Hall to try to withdraw her ballot, is still in prison.

Many other questions remain. For example, could the national media's striking lack of interest in the story of how a U.S. attorney might have tried to destroy an innocent woman's life in order to appease the White House and save his job have anything to do with the fact that Biskupic's sister is a prominent reporter for The Washington Post?

Who exactly are the real criminals here?

<snip>

Link: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5500807,00.html

It's all so incestuous.

And according to this, she works for USA Today now.

Link: http://www.nndb.com/people/499/000131106/

:shrug:

[WillyT]

3. Last Kick From Me...

:kick:

[bbgrunt]

4. I wonder how many other travesties go unreported. Krugman

was sure right when he said the bigger scandal lies in what those who weren't fired were up to.