NYT: Give Jailed Alabama Dem Gov. Same Check as Georgia Thompson

The outlandish conviction and imprisonment of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman this year is drawing widespread condemnation as a political prosecution engineered by Karl Rove.

The New York Times is calling for a judicial and political examination that would free the wrongfully imprisoned Siegelman, just as the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh District freed and exonerated Wisconsin’s Georgia Thompson.

Some highlights from today’s Times editorial:

“We hope that the appeals court that hears Mr. Siegelman’s case will give it the same hard look that another appeals court recently gave the case of Georgia Thompson. Ms. Thompson, a low-level employee in a Democratic administration in Wisconsin, was found to have been wrongly convicted of corruption by another United States attorney (Stephen Biskupic).”

“The idea of federal prosecutors putting someone in jail for partisan gain is shocking. But the United States attorneys scandal has made clear that the Bush Justice Department acts in shocking ways.”

“The most arresting evidence that Mr. Siegelman may have been railroaded is a sworn statement by a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson. Ms. Simpson said she was on a conference call in which Bill Canary, the husband of the United States attorney whose office handled the case, insisted that ‘his girls’ would ‘take care of” Mr. Siegelman. According to Ms. Simpson, he identified his ‘girls’ as his wife, Leura Canary, and another top Alabama prosecutor. Mr. Canary, who has longstanding ties to Karl Rove, also said, according to Ms. Simpson, that he had worked it out with ’Karl.’”

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