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Guest
April 16, 2007
Editorial Observer
A Woman Wrongly Convicted and a U.S. Attorney Who Kept His Job
By ADAM COHEN
Madison, Wis.
Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year
trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to
jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was
re-elected - and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly
convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United
States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.
The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the
firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political
purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were
fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept
their jobs.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms.
Thompson's case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was
political - but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary
move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a
decision. "Your evidence is beyond thin," Judge Diane Wood told the
prosecutor. "I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is."
Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that
Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy
case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal
governor's race.
There was good reason for the appeals court to be shocked. Ms. Thompson, a
56-year-old single woman, seems to have lost her home and spent four months
in prison simply for doing her job. Ms. Thompson, who spent years in the
travel industry before becoming a state employee, was responsible for
putting the state's travel account up for competitive bid. Mr. Biskupic
claimed that she awarded the contract to an agency called Adelman Travel
because its C.E.O. contributed to Mr. Doyle's campaign.
To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of
innocence. Ms. Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant,
hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics.
She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the
bidders. She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She
also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that
competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.
While Ms. Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr.
Biskupic. The decision to award the contract - the supposed crime - occurred
in Madison, in the jurisdiction of Wisconsin's other United States attorney.
But for reasons that are hard to understand, the Milwaukee-based Mr.
Biskupic swept in and took the case.
While he was investigating, in the fall of 2005, Mr. Biskupic informed the
media. Justice Department guidelines say federal prosecutors can publicly
discuss investigations before an indictment only under extraordinary
circumstances. This case hardly met that test.
The prosecution proceeded on a schedule that worked out perfectly for the
Republican candidate for governor. Mr. Biskupic announced Ms. Thompson's
indictment in January 2006. She went to trial that summer, and was sentenced
in late September, weeks before the election. Mr. Biskupic insisted in July,
as he vowed to continue the investigation, that "the review is not going to
be tied to the political calendar."
But the Thompson case was "the No. 1 issue" in the governor's race, says the
Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman, Joe Wineke. In a barrage of
commercials, Mr. Doyle's opponents created an organizational chart that
linked Ms. Thompson - misleadingly called a "Doyle aide" - to the governor.
Ms. Thompson appeared in an unflattering picture, stamped "guilty," and in
another ad, her name was put on a graphic of jail-cell doors slamming shut.
Most of the eight dismissed prosecutors came from swing states, and
Democrats suspect they may have been purged to make room for prosecutors who
would help Republicans win close elections. If so, it might also mean that
United States attorneys in all swing states were under unusual pressure.
Wisconsin may be the closest swing state of all. President Bush lost it in
2004 by about 12,000 votes, and in 2000, by about half that. According to
some Wisconsin politicians, Karl Rove said that their state was his highest
priority among governor's races in 2006, because he believed a Republican
governor could help the party win Wisconsin in the 2008 presidential
election.
Mr. Biskupic insists that he prosecuted Ms. Thompson only because he
believed a crime was committed, and that he did not discuss the political
implications of the case or the timing with anyone in the Justice Department
or the White House. Congress has asked the Justice Department for all e-mail
messages about the case to help resolve the matter.
But even if there were no discussions, Mr. Biskupic may have known that his
bosses in Washington expected him to use his position to help Republicans
win elections, and then did what they wanted.
That would be ironic indeed. One of the biggest weaknesses in the case
against Ms. Thompson was that to commit the crime she was charged with she
had to have tried to gain personally from the contract, and there's no
credible evidence that she did. So Mr. Biskupic made the creative argument
that she gained by obtaining "political advantage for her superiors" and
that in pleasing them she "enhanced job security for herself." Those
motivations, of course, may well describe why Mr. Biskupic prosecuted Ms.
Thompson.
Editorial Observer
A Woman Wrongly Convicted and a U.S. Attorney Who Kept His Job
By ADAM COHEN
Madison, Wis.
Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year
trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to
jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was
re-elected - and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly
convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United
States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.
The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the
firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political
purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were
fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept
their jobs.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms.
Thompson's case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was
political - but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary
move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a
decision. "Your evidence is beyond thin," Judge Diane Wood told the
prosecutor. "I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is."
Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that
Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy
case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal
governor's race.
There was good reason for the appeals court to be shocked. Ms. Thompson, a
56-year-old single woman, seems to have lost her home and spent four months
in prison simply for doing her job. Ms. Thompson, who spent years in the
travel industry before becoming a state employee, was responsible for
putting the state's travel account up for competitive bid. Mr. Biskupic
claimed that she awarded the contract to an agency called Adelman Travel
because its C.E.O. contributed to Mr. Doyle's campaign.
To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of
innocence. Ms. Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant,
hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics.
She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the
bidders. She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She
also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that
competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.
While Ms. Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr.
Biskupic. The decision to award the contract - the supposed crime - occurred
in Madison, in the jurisdiction of Wisconsin's other United States attorney.
But for reasons that are hard to understand, the Milwaukee-based Mr.
Biskupic swept in and took the case.
While he was investigating, in the fall of 2005, Mr. Biskupic informed the
media. Justice Department guidelines say federal prosecutors can publicly
discuss investigations before an indictment only under extraordinary
circumstances. This case hardly met that test.
The prosecution proceeded on a schedule that worked out perfectly for the
Republican candidate for governor. Mr. Biskupic announced Ms. Thompson's
indictment in January 2006. She went to trial that summer, and was sentenced
in late September, weeks before the election. Mr. Biskupic insisted in July,
as he vowed to continue the investigation, that "the review is not going to
be tied to the political calendar."
But the Thompson case was "the No. 1 issue" in the governor's race, says the
Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman, Joe Wineke. In a barrage of
commercials, Mr. Doyle's opponents created an organizational chart that
linked Ms. Thompson - misleadingly called a "Doyle aide" - to the governor.
Ms. Thompson appeared in an unflattering picture, stamped "guilty," and in
another ad, her name was put on a graphic of jail-cell doors slamming shut.
Most of the eight dismissed prosecutors came from swing states, and
Democrats suspect they may have been purged to make room for prosecutors who
would help Republicans win close elections. If so, it might also mean that
United States attorneys in all swing states were under unusual pressure.
Wisconsin may be the closest swing state of all. President Bush lost it in
2004 by about 12,000 votes, and in 2000, by about half that. According to
some Wisconsin politicians, Karl Rove said that their state was his highest
priority among governor's races in 2006, because he believed a Republican
governor could help the party win Wisconsin in the 2008 presidential
election.
Mr. Biskupic insists that he prosecuted Ms. Thompson only because he
believed a crime was committed, and that he did not discuss the political
implications of the case or the timing with anyone in the Justice Department
or the White House. Congress has asked the Justice Department for all e-mail
messages about the case to help resolve the matter.
But even if there were no discussions, Mr. Biskupic may have known that his
bosses in Washington expected him to use his position to help Republicans
win elections, and then did what they wanted.
That would be ironic indeed. One of the biggest weaknesses in the case
against Ms. Thompson was that to commit the crime she was charged with she
had to have tried to gain personally from the contract, and there's no
credible evidence that she did. So Mr. Biskupic made the creative argument
that she gained by obtaining "political advantage for her superiors" and
that in pleasing them she "enhanced job security for herself." Those
motivations, of course, may well describe why Mr. Biskupic prosecuted Ms.
Thompson.
