JACKSON — An imprisoned former prominent Mississippi attorney wants his bribery conviction thrown out, with his lawyer on Wednesday accusing prosecutors of withholding evidence as in the botched case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
Paul Minor was one of Mississippi’s most successful attorneys and was a big donor to Democratic candidates before being convicted on corruption charges in 2007. Minor has long said he was the target of a political prosecution by the Justice Department under Republican President George W. Bush.
Minor’s attorney, Hiram Eastland Jr., said he sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who was appointed after Democrat Barack Obama became president in January. Eastland said Minor’s case has striking similarities to the Stevens’ case.
“This is like the Stevens case on steroids,” Eastland told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, was convicted on corruption charges in October, but the case was dismissed in April after the Justice Department acknowledged it had improperly withheld evidence.
Eastland said the same prosecutor, William Welch, the chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, oversaw both cases.
He said in the letter that a pattern has emerged that prosecutions managed by Welch have “allowed ground level prosecutors to engage in the blatantly improper, unethical and unconstitutional trial tactic of withholding exculpatory evidence from defendants.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined comment.
Minor, 63, was convicted of orchestrating a scheme in which he guaranteed loans for the judges, then used cash and third parties to conceal the fact that he paid off the loans. The judges were convicted of giving Minor’s clients favorable rulings in exchange for the money.
An appeal is pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Minor built a small law firm on the Mississippi Gulf Coast into one with a national reputation for successfully suing tobacco, asbestos and other companies. He was convicted in 2007 of bribing two judges in coastal Harrison County. He’s serving an 11-year sentence in a federal prison in Florida.
Eastland has said Minor was singled out for making routine campaign contributions by Republican prosecutors to stop his financial backing of Democratic candidates and causes. Prosecutors have called the allegation “wild speculation and innuendo” and point out that he was convicted by a jury of his peers.
Besides allegedly withholding evidence, Eastland told AP, “the government frankly misrepresented the standard of the law and convicted this man on a lesser standard of proof than they were held to in other parts of the county.”
Eastland said the jury should have been required to find explicit proof that the loans were in exchange for specific acts, known in legal terms as a “quid pro quo.”
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