A poisonous kind of justice

[muriel_volestrangler]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=556734

When Dr Thomas Butler noticed vials of plague bacteria were missing from his Texas university lab, he did the right thing and informed the FBI - only to find himself the prime suspect in a bio-terrorism investigation. Now he's in jail, but his fate was sealed by paranoia and prejudice.
...
But the Department of Justice's blood was up. It was only two years since five people had been killed by letters laced with anthrax, and the entire weight of the nation's investigative powers had failed to catch the sender. Any whiff of bio-terrorism got the full attention of the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, especially as the letters are widely believed to have been sent by someone working as a biological weapons scientist.

Ashcroft immediately briefed the President on the missing plague. It did not matter that the FBI soon came to the conclusion that the vials had probably been destroyed accidentally. These 30 containers of yersinia pestis were now a national emergency, and Dr Thomas Butler, who had written a paper in the 1970s that pioneered oral rehydration therapy for diarrhoea and who could thus, with no arrogance, claim to have saved millions of lives, was now Dr Plague, suspected bio-terrorist.
...
Despite the sentence, Butler's plea may have had an effect. "The jury was the most likely to be affected by the possibility of the plague on the loose in Lubbock," says Turley. "But they overturned nearly all the plague charges. They did not believe the testimony of six FBI agents." Meanwhile District Judge Sam Cummings, whose reputation for tough sentencing has earned him the nickname "Maximum Sam", imposed a record number of "downward departures", allowing him to levy sentences less the minimum stipulated by law. He also decided that Texas Tech was owed just $38,675, a far cry from the $1m it was after. The government wanted ten years; they got two. They've already filed an appeal to increase the sentence. Butler's lawyers are preparing their own appeal.

I hadn't heard of this before - though since 60 Minutes did a story about it, perhaps it was on DU somewhere earlier. It looks like the DoJ are out to get a stiff sentence, no matter what the person has done.

[tkulesa]

1. This is Sick

This is why we need to get rid of Ashcroft and have some way of making sure nobody like him ever gets into the AG office again.

How the hell can they f*ck up a man's entire life for doing the right thing?

How can they get away with manufacturing charges and convicting someone of things that aren't a crime?

I'm disgusted.

[struggle4progress]

2. kick

:kick: