Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
The momentum against U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan is growing. New developments:
A bipartisan letter signed by 33 public officials, personalities, and media figures is calling on U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to intervene to prevent Buchanan from retrying Wecht.
In a laughable fit of hypocrisy, Buchanan’s office is complaining that the jury pool has been tainted by the media campaign waged by Dr. Wecht’s attorneys. What they mean is that the people in Pittsburgh are starting to realize that this prosecution is a politically-motivated sham. The “tainted jury pool” complaint is also coming from an aggressively self-promoting prosecutor who seeks out high-profile prosecutions, has made copious use of press releases and press conferences to bolster public opinion about her cases. Buchanan’s office now says they may need to pull juries from as far away as Erie to try to the Pittsburgh doctor.
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette took aim at Buchanan in a strongly-worded editorial:
In a replay of the fizzled public corruption trial of Cyril H. Wecht, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan knows no bounds in her gamesmanship.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Stallings claims jurors from as far away as Erie might be needed in the retrial of Dr. Wecht on May 27. This, supposedly because of an “unethical media campaign” waged by the former Allegheny County coroner and his lawyers.
That’s absurd.
[...]
A letter signed by 33 notable Western Pennsylvanians, Republicans and Democrats alike, urges Buchanan to drop the Wecht retrial. That isn’t likely, observers say.
At the very least, she should consider the observation from University of Pittsburgh law professor John Burkoff, who puts the unpopular re-prosecution in perspective: “It’s getting beyond embarrassing. We’re nearing humiliation.”
Buchanan’s office is continuing to defend their almost instant decision to try the case again, before they had even polled the jury in the case. Weirdly, they’re boasting about a letter from one juror who said there was a 6-5 vote to convict Wecht on 17 of the 41 charges. So they got a bare majority on less than half the charges in a federal court system where prosecutors win about 95 percent of the time. Either there are real questions about Wecht’s guilt, or Buchanan and her subordinates did a pretty crappy job.
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on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
This could be fun. I live 30 miles north of Pittsburgh and guess who just sent in his questionaire for Federal Jury Duty.
“Either there are real questions about Wecht’s guilt, or Buchanan and her subordinates did a pretty crappy job.”
Or both.
[...] media figures is calling on U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to intervene to prevent Buchananhttp://www.theagitator.com/2008/04/22/more-on-mary-beth/Capsule reviews of `Harold & Kumar’ and other films AP via Yahoo! News Capsule reviews of films [...]
With Mary Beth Buchanan it was never a question of if this would happen, it was always a question of when. I hope that Congress reviews her other cases where people did not have the benefit of Wecht’s resources to hire a multi-million dollar legal dream team. Cases such as Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, Sheriff Pete DeFazio, Mayor Tom Murphy, Brian Douglas Wells…and the list goes on.
Brian Douglas Wells is a very disturbing case. Wells was the pizza delivery man who had a bomb placed on his head. Because of the police response in which they did not beleive him and failed to call the bomb squad at the first reporting that he had a bomb, the police were going to be liable for the death of Wells. Well, not so fast, Mary Beth Buchanan entered with a very questionable indictment at the eleventh hour that names Wells as a co-conspirator in the bank robber since he was forced to rob the bank. The indictment spark outrage by Wells’ family causing Mary Beth to end her press conference and the indictment in turn absolved the police of wrong doing.
That “strongly worded editorial” hails from the Tribune-Review, not the Post-Gazette. Big difference for some of us locals.
To my mind, letting fly some bombast about the jury pool in this inescapably public trial (or even “doing a pretty crappy job”) does not equal political prosecution. We gots little but Democrats in this fair city, and some of them, (as single-parties do) get lazy in the corruption department. Which is not to say I’m indicting Wecht quite yet.