Justice For Sale

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Jackson Free Press
By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
August 6, 2008

Almost immediately after his appointment to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi in late 2001, Dunnica Lampton began to investigate key Mississippi Democrats.

Trial lawyer and major Democratic campaign contributor Paul Minor quickly became a target of such an investigation. On July 25, 2003, three months before the Mississippi gubernatorial election, a jury indicted Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Paul Minor, former Chancery Court Judge Wes Teel and former Circuit Court Judge John Whitfield on charges of bribery. The charges related to loan guarantees that Minor had made to the three judges to help defray campaign costs.

No state law prohibited Minor’s contributions, and his trial resulted in an acquittal on some charges and a deadlocked jury on others. However, immediately following that trial, Lampton brought new charges.

During the second trial, presiding Judge Henry Wingate excluded evidence that showed Minor had a long-established pattern of offering loans or loan guarantees to many friends in the legal community, thus creating the appearance that Minor had helped the three judges in hopes of receiving something in return.

Although prosecutors were unable to prove that Minor had bribed the judges in exchange for favors, the second trial resulted in a conviction. Minor was sentenced to serve an 11-year prison term and pay more than $4 million in fines and restitution.

As in the case of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman—also targeted by a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney—Minor has been denied appeal bond. Both Siegelman and Minor, despite being convicted of white-collar, non-violent crimes, were shackled and manacled, and moved to out-of-state prisons.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has since released Siegelman as he appeals his case.

Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz, who himself was indicted and acquitted twice in the Minor case, has asserted that the defendants were presumed guilty from the start. “An individual was singled out for examination from the federal government, and prosecutors then attempted to make his conduct fit into some criminal statute,” Diaz said. “This is not how our system of justice is supposed to operate.”