IP: did anyone notice? congressional criminal suspects get

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

X-Sender: jwarren () mail well com
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:22:02 -0800
From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>




This NEEDS prominant editorial and news-page coverage!


This is a *major* civil liberties "exemption"-for-Congress-critters, and
has [apparently] received almost *no* publicity -- and [apparently] *none*
of the OUTRAGED publicity that it deserves.


I just spotted -- buried as a tiny squibblet -- a wee 2-'graph "article" in
the San Francisco Chomicle <sic> saying that the House Appropriations
Committee just approved a major spending bill that included the following
provision:


If members of Congress or their legislative staff get charged with a
[some?] crime [or civil tort?], are tried, and *aquitted*, then [all?] of
their legal fees will be repaid by money that would be deducted from the
Justice Department's budget!


[The "?" above were because the tiny article ignored all these important
details -- perhaps illustrating why so many people call it the SF
"Chomicle."]


The article tied the provision to Joseph McDate's (R-PA) aquittal less than
a year earlier of federal bribery and racketeering charges.


Does anyone know of *any* other class of criminal suspects that can
automatically recoup their legal fees if they're aquitted? !!!  Hell no!
It would create *massive* changes in the entire criminal justice system --
effectively implementing contingency-fee criminal defenses (a horrifying
thought for prosecutors -- hell!, that's mean a *balanced* criminal justice
system! ;-).


Talk about "miscarriage of 'justice'"!!! ...  <snarl>  [The outrage, of
course, is not that this is being proposed -- but that if enacted, it would
be a perc UNavailable to all *other* criminal suspects -- proposed *only*
for congressional politicians and their lackies ... and providing a
*massive* chilling effect on potential prosecution of political
wrong-doing.]


--jim (jwarren () well com)
Jim Warren activist-in-burnout & Contributing Editor (MicroTimes)
345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax(how quaint)/<ask>


[self-inflating puff:  Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy
Foundation; James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award, Soc.of Prof.
Journalists-Nor.Cal.; Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (in its
first year, 1992);  founded InfoWorld magazine; the Computers, Freedom &
Privacy confs; blah blah blah]