DeLay’s odd new legal strategy

October 21, 2005

Tom DeLay made his first appearance in court this morning, but it’ll be a little while until he’s arraigned on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Apparently, he doesn’t like his judge.

Inside the courtroom, Judge Bob Perkins told defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin that “the best way for me to handle” the request for a new judge would be to defer further proceedings.

That set the stage for a pointed exchange between the two men that seemed as much a campaign debate as a courtroom exchange.

In respectful tones, DeGuerin noted that Perkins had donated money to MoveOn.org, a liberal organization that he said has been “selling T-shirts with Mr. DeLay’s mug shot on it.”

“Let me just say I haven’t ever seen that T-shirt, number one. Number two, I haven’t bought it. Number three, the last time I contributed to MoveOn that I know of was prior to the November election last year, when they were primarily helping Sen. Kerry,” responded the judge.

Since this will probably be one of the new talking points on Fox News, it’s worth noting that DeGuerin’s just wrong. MoveOn.org does not, and has not, sold any such shirt.

Nevertheless, DeLay’s team seems intent on finding as Republican a setting as humanly possible. In addition to wanting a new judge, DeLay’s lawyers are asking to have the case moved out of Austin, because they believe the city is home to too many liberals.

I guess the poor guy isn’t very confident in the merit of his defense.

For what it’s worth, the DA’s office is fighting the requests.

Prosecutor Ronnie Earle signaled he intends to contest the request for a new judge.

“What this means is if a judge had contributed to Crime Stoppers that judge could not hear a burglary case,” Earle said. “Carried to its extreme, that is what I think this motion means and I think that’s absurd.”

“We don’t live in a country where political party determines the measure of justice,” Earle said, adding that he thought DeLay could get a fair trial in the state’s capital.

I hope he’s right.

What DeLay is trying to do is called “judge shopping” and is against the rules in every court I’m familiar with. Maybe in Texas it’s different, but that would be a sad commentary indeed.

Usually judges are assigned to cases in a completely random and arbitrary manner to ensure fairness. And each judge is duty-bound to recuse himself or herself automatically if they are aware of anything that might constitute a conflict of interest that might prevent them from ruling objectively in any given case.

Again, things might be different in Texas, but it’s hard for me to believe the laws of standard judicial procedure could be so radically different, even in Texas. Perhaps someone with direct experience in the state can shed some light on the matter.

  • It is worth recalling DeGuerin’s tactics in the Hutchison case. The first step was to blanket the airwaves with propaganda. The next step was to claim that because of all of the publicity that the case had garnered it was impossible to have a fair trail in Austin. He succeeded in having the venue changed to one he considered more favorable.

    Another tactic was to file motions which delayed the trail and then claim that Earle was slowing down the case.

    Democrats really must study the Hutichison case as primer on DeLay defense. Far from showing that Earle was a partisian, as Republicans loudly shout, the record shows that Hutichison was most likely guilty., but DeGuerin’s manuevering worked.

    So far, the DeLay defense has shown no innovations. Let hope that Earle has closely studied the game film from his last match-up with DeGuerin.

    I don’t have time at the moment, but I’ll post links to a couple of articles on the Hutchison case, which should be of interest to everyone.

  • What is the Hutchison case? I remember DeGuerin from the fruitless Branch Davidian negotiations in 1993 at Waco. Is DeGuerin as big a “whack-job” as David Koresh was? And why the hell is DeGuerin DeLay’s lawyer? Maybe it’s alliteration: De-De-De, Da-Da-Da (apologies to Sting).

  • If this request is rejected, DeLay also has the following other reasons to change judges:

    10. Once he wore black shoes with a brown shirt.
    9. He chose Coke over Pepsi in a blind taste test.
    8. There is a dirty rhyme about him on a men’s room wall.
    7. He bangs the gavel too hard. It give’s DeLay a headache.
    6. He wouldn’t accept his bribe.
    5. His favorite color is blue.
    4. He didn’t get the Abramoff Seal of Approval.
    3. There’s no 10 Commandments display in his courtroom.
    2. DeLay already paid people under the table for it.

    And the number one reason to change judges:

    Two words: man crush.

  • Holden does some research:

    “It turns out that since 1992 [DeLay’s attorney Dick] DeGuerin had contributed $2,500 to the Democratic National Committee, $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a total of $11,800 to six Democratic candidates including a $1,000 donation to Nick Lampson in 1996 who just happens to be running against Tom DeLay in 2006.

    In fact, DeGuerin has contributed to the campaigns of just two Republicans, $1,000 to Congressman Ted Poe and $9,800 to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (chump change in comparison with the legal fee he must have recieved from her when he defended Hutchinson from Ronnie Earle).”

    He’s got it itemized.

  • The primary piece of “evidence” in the campaign to paint Ronnie Earle as a Democratic partisan has been his prosecution of Kay Bailey Hutchison on charges she used state employees and resources for political purposes while she was Texas State Treasurer*. Her indictment occurred while she was preparing to run the United States Senate. A typical example of the use of this “evidence” is the following passage from the Wall Street Journal, via the Daily DeLay,

    Mr. Earle, a partisan Democrat, has a record of making suspect accusations: In 1993, he indicted newly elected Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on evidence so weak the case was never brought to trial.

    Variants of this rightwing boilerplate are bouncing around all over.

    When I tried to find out the actual facts of the case, I had trouble find either current reporting or contemporaneous reporting on it. Fortunately Billmon was able to find a long article written shortly after Hutchison episode ended in a directed acquittal base on records made public by Earle. The article by Miriam Rozen appeared in the Houston Press. For those not inclined to wade through this ten page tome of an article, Billmon also has link to a short summary. These are the articles that I promised to post links to in my previous post.

    Finally, for any of you who still have Republican friends- I lost mine along time ago- who may argue that the Earle data dump was itself evidence of partisanship on his part, the NYTimes has the reason behind it.

    With no assurance that the judge would admit the prosecution’s evidence, Mr. Earle refused to open his case in court, leading to a directed acquittal. Then, seizing on an invitation by Ms. Hutchison at a news conference to make available “all the correspondence and my thank-you notes for flowers,” he led reporters on a tour of the evidence he was not able to present in court.
    Earle was doing nothing more than calling Hutchison’s bluff.

    *As an aside, it is interesting to speculate on the role the Hutchison prosecution had on the Republicans going after Gore for allegedly using his White House office for fund raising. Karl Rove was part of the Hutchison political apparatus. The Gore allegations may have been payback.

  • Dear Rege,

    It isn’t judge shopping. The judge DID recuse himself in the Hutchinson case for exactly the same reason. He should here. I would hate to go on trail for performing a 13th week abortion in the “bible belt!”

    We all seem to be idealogues, but I think this thing will shake out fairly. Even if Delay is exonerated and Earle charged with misconduct, the ounce of flesh has been exected.

    Teetering

  • Judge Perkins should not have deferred further proceedings if he had the option to do so. The issue here is not alleged contributions made to MoveOn by the judge but whether or not scumbag DeLay is guilty of criminal conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering. The insinuation that a Republican lowlife like DeLay simply can’t get a fair trial because of a “T-shirt with DeLay’s mug shot on it” is beyond ludicrous, it’s surreal. Of course, we are talking about a shmuck that claimed he couldn’t get in to the Vietnam war because there were too many minorities ahead of him in the draft.

    Please, somebody squash this cockroach before I commit murder.

  • I bet you would really want to “crush” the cockroach if he got out of the draft through family connections and then while enjoying the good life stateside, drove off a bridge killed a girl while fleeing police in a drunken stuper after a yacht race.

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