Why Gary White was Prosecuted

To coerce him into supplying false evidence against Don Siegelman and to score points with Bettye Fine Collins.

This, according to Harpers Magazine.

And while there is an ongoing discussion here about the two (count ‘em, two) Bessemer newspapers, the reputation of The Birmingham News is called into question by this article.

“Both of them are having their credibility tested severely, and neither has much of a record to stand on.”

“Both” refers to The Birmingham News and Alice Martin, who is getting more coverage in this blog than anyone of late. Well not quite, but she should.

If you want to keep up with the goin’s on about the Alice Martin, Don Siegelman and other's case read Legal Schnauzer every day. You can jump in anytime and just read a few days worth and be hooked. It's better than Days of Our Lives (which you can watch once weekly or monthly or yearly and still be up to date).

Here is a quote in the Harpers article from Judy White’s (Gary’s wife) affidavit. The full affidavit can be linked from the article.

(federal agents) repeatedly and insistently told my husband that they ‘needed’ for [a particular] meeting [between Governor Siegelman and Richard Scrushy] to have occurred at the particular and specific date, and that they wanted him to testify that it did. My husband maintained that he could not do so, as he did not know when the meeting occurred. They even attempted to persuade him that the meeting ‘could have’ taken place on the date they stated, and reminded him that he had no calendar saying that it did not.

The article is pretty long, but juicy, in my opinion.

If you were an outsider and had no clue about Alabama politics, would you have ever guessed that the Siegelman case and the Gary White case were related? Or that the Birmingham News wa involved in more than just reporting? Or not reporting?

Scott Horton, the author of the Harper's piece, offers this too, about the Siegelman case.

• sworn evidence by a Republican campaign operative, corroborated by documents and other witnesses, that White House figures including Karl Rove manipulated the prosecution to support G.O.P. election campaign projects,
• well-documented evidence of conflicts of interest by the two U.S. attorneys involved (Alice Martin and Leura Canary),
• admission that the two most senior career prosecutors on the case recommended against a prosecution of Siegelman,
• testimony before Congress that political appointees overrode their determinations in directing a prosecution,
• confirmation that evidence of criminal wrongdoing by William Pryor and Jeff Sessions, far stronger than any of the charges against Siegelman, was swept under the carpet by a prosecutor assigned to handle the matter, who was the wife of William Pryor’s lawyer (Pryor and Sessions belonged to the “home team,” as Time’s Adam Zagorin was told).

At any rate, it looks like Alice Martin should be placed under oath again in the near future. If that happens, let's see if she tells the truth this time. And let's see if the Birmingham News reports it.