Did W help Geoffrey Fieger beat the rap?

[Bozita]

BRIAN DICKERSON
Did W help Fieger beat the rap?
BY BRIAN DICKERSON • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • JUNE 27, 2008

Criminal defense attorney Steve Fishman has strung together some impressive wins in Detroit's federal courthouse over the last few years -- and he thinks George W. Bush deserves some of the credit.

Fishman, whose client Ven Johnson was acquitted of campaign finance fraud earlier this month along with his better-known partner, Geoffrey Fieger, doesn't discount his own skills. And he says Johnson and others he has successfully defended fully deserved to be exonerated.

But Fishman thinks the current administration's record of deception on matters ranging from the war in Iraq to last year's politically-tainted ousters of at least nine federal prosecutors has made jurors more susceptible to the idea that federal prosecutors in Detroit may not be telling them the unvarnished truth.

A vote of no confidence

Thursday, in his first extended interview since Fieger and Johnson were acquitted, Fishman recounted how defense attorneys impaneled a series of mock juries in preparation for the trial that played out before U.S. District Judge Paul Borman last month.

In his initial meeting with 39 mock jurors chosen to represent a typical southeast Michigan jury pool, the judge hired to conduct the simulated trials asked how many trusted their government to tell the truth. Just four of 39 raised their hands.

"In my father's day," Fishman told me, "there would have been 38 hands up, with maybe one holdout who'd just gotten out of prison."

The mock jurors' overwhelming skepticism, he recalls, underlined how much the credibility of prosecutors and law enforcement officials had suffered in the wake of multiple Justice Department scandals that drove ex-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from office last year.

"That was when I became sure we were going to win our case," he says.

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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080627/COL04/806270330/1001/news

[Doctor_J]

1. Sadly, I must agree

I trust nothing I hear from the * admin, or from their wholly-owned whores in Big Media. In fact, I usually assume that anything they say is a lie.

[formercia]

2. Juries may act in the opposite way when Junior is out of office

and Obama appoints an honest AG. When Bush Gang goes before the Judge, the jury, having all suffered economically at the minimum will look upon their Alligator tears as rain, something to water the Turnips with.

[Demeter]

3. If He Did, It Wasn't Intentional!

Just one of those heck-of-a-job moments.