A Waste Of Money
So the jury in the John Edwards case acquitted him of one charge and couldn’t make up its mind about the other five, and a mistrial is declared. Now the Department of Justice has to decide whether to waste even more tax dollars with another trial on the other five charges.
This whole thing was a waste of time and money involving a guess as to the intentions of the defendant in order to justify a claim of a violation of the campaign law. None of the money involved ever saw a campaign account, so the whole thing was beyond weak.
Not one single person has been put on trial for blowing up the world economy, not one single bank has been charged for forging documents in foreclosures, but they have resources to waste on prosecuting John Edwards for acting like John Ensign.
No mistake – John Edwards is a real jerk for what he did, but justice and judgment was the right of his family and friends, not the Federal court.
2 comments
Edwards is sleazy, but being a sleaze isn’t a crime, otherwise almost every used car salesman in the country would be in jail. This jihad against Democrats who poke their prong where it ain’t s’pozed to be has always baffled me, yes, it’s morally disgusting, but it ain’t illegal for cryin’ out loud, and trying to find a loophole to let you prosecute someone for it is just plain silly.
Hopefully someone at the Justice Department has enough sense to pull the plug on this now…
– Badtux the Sleaze-aint-illegal Penguin
Most of the ‘legal commentariat’ have wondered from the beginning why this case was even pursued. It requires a jury to read the defendant’s mind, and I don’t know how you can expect that. The only way you could prove the case is to have Edwards take the stand and admit it. There was a less than zero chance of that happening, so why go forward?
The case was lost, and the prosecution should have known it, when it went beyond a week of deliberations. If the jury didn’t buy it quickly, they weren’t going to buy it after thinking about it.