In today’s above the fold report on Judge Bobby DeLaughter’s fate, award winning journalist Mitchell gets a lot right. But just like we took another local blogger to task over mangling words with regards to Minor, we must do the same to Jerry this morning.
I think Mitchell missed the boat on one key point.
Where he got it wrong was when he characterized Minor’s transgression as purely a violation of “campaign finance”. From his article . . .
In 2007, a federal jury in Mississippi convicted Minor and two former Mississippi Gulf Coast judges – Wes Teel and John Whitfield – of corruption because Minor had helped guarantee or pay off campaign loans of the judges who heard some of his cases.
THEY WERE NOT ALL CAMPAIGN FINANCE LOANS. It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing. Minor is basing a huge part of his defense on this “Bush folks were out to get me because I donated to Democratic causes”. It seems that he has been marginally effective in doing so by confusing someone as talented as Mitchell. However, the loans WERE NOT ALL campaign loans . . . they were personal loans too. I know Mitchell would be embarassed to know he made the same mistake that other lesser journalist types gleefully misrepresented.
From the Government’s Statement of the facts in their brief against Minor’s appeal (start on p10 of the brief), Whitfield got a personal loan of $100K to buy his then-girlfriend a house. It wasn’t a campaign loan. It was a personal loan. According to the brief, Whitfield later lied about that in his divorce proceeding. Whitfield never disclosed the existence of the personal loan from Minor. Minor then got a strawman to pay the loan off. Whitfield never claimed the loans on his annual statement of financial interest or his campaign disclosure forms.
Teel’s loan was a campaign loan (paid out by Dickie Scruggs as the strawman). But Minor also then helped financially and in-kind with Teel’s legal defense on his criminal investigation. That had value and neither the campaign loan forgiveness nor Minor’s personal largesse to Teel was ever disclosed. Minor then, according to the government, manipulated a matter to get in front of Teel that was set as a bench trial where Teel, according to the government, applied direct pressure on the defense for a huge settlement. The defendant was not made aware of the financial relationship between the judge and the plaintiff’s lawyer.
I could also mention that I think Mitchell should have given at least a paragraph to the alleged ex parte communication with Peters. If it happened as described, it’s unforgiveable and its from there where the mail fraud charges stem. But I totally get there is only so much space in an article.
I do agree that Minor’s fate and DeLaughter’s fate have some common interests. Minor and DeLaughter both seem to be saying, “I may be crooked, but I ain’t a criminal” in their defense postures. But at the end of the day, DeLaughter will inevitably face Peters, Scruggs, and Langston that will all presumably testify against him per their deals. That’s an awfully big hammer no matter how you want to parse the technical language of the statutes.
Magnolia Tribune
