Tobin conviction in phone-jamming case overturned

[kpete]

Tobin conviction in phone-jamming case overturned
By The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 - Bangor Daily News


By Beverley Wang
The Associated Press


CONCORD, N.H. - A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction and sentence of James Tobin, a Bangor man former Republican National Committee official accused in a phone-jamming plot on Election Day 2002.

The former regional chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign, Tobin was convicted in 2005 of helping to arrange more than 800 hang-up calls that jammed get-out-the-vote phone lines set up by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters’ union for about an hour. Republican John Sununu defeated then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for the Senate that day.

Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the statute under which Tobin was convicted "is not a close fit" for what Tobin did and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin intended to harass.

more at:
http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=147743&zoneid=583

[Blackhatjack]

1. Was it reversal and vacation, or vacation and order of a new trial? That could be good...

THe US attorney would find it incredibly difficult to go easy a second time around on Mr. Tobin given the atmosphere swirling today regarding politicization of prosecutions.

[Jacobin]

2. Forking Federalist Society judges

[Lasher]

3. Dems: GOP Phone Jamming Case Stalled, Mishandled

In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.

<snip>

One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that "all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself" -- first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.

A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. "He said, 'Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.'" Durken told me that such a fact didn't "surprise" him, given the political nature of the case.

<snip>

But whether Ashcroft's, and later Gonzales', involvement was unusual or not, Democrats say that the need to check decisions with DoJ higher-ups routinely resulted in "inordinate delays" in the investigation. They also say that both AGs failed to recuse themselves, despite a conflict of interest: Ashcroft as a former senator, since Tobin was a high ranking official in the committee that helped Ashcroft get elected; and Gonzales as legal counsel for the White House, since the Democrats alleged White House involvement in the jamming scheme.

The Democrats' other grievances, which they lay out in the letter, are 1) that the Justice Department bogged the investigation down by assigning only one FBI agent to the case -- and that agent was part-time 2) that the DoJ's refusal to prosecute the organziations responsible for the jamming, the New Hampshire Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, violated Justice Department guidelines, and 3) the DoJ failed to follow leads that led to higher-level Republican involvement.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002839.php