Buried Secrets
2010-12-06 - by
By not indicting Governor Easley, Joe Cheshire says, District Attorney William Kenerly proved Easley’s innocent and not just innocent but a victim too. The Governor, Cheshire says, has been ‘trashed’ by the villains in the press.
And he has a case: The newspapers report the Governor’s done everything from swapping developers permits in exchange for sweetheart deals on beach front lots to getting his wife a $850,000 job at NCSU and now Cheshire’s arguing, ‘If the prosecutors could have proved one of these sweetheart deals they would have. They couldn’t. So they didn’t. Which proves the Governor’s hands are clean.
For his part, Prosecutor Kenerly says his plea bargain with the Governor did serve the ends of justice. And he has a point too: No one really wanted Mike Easley to go to prison and Easley’s been paying lawyers so long he’s broke and out of work and all but unemployable and I suspect Easley has the same need as other Governors, Senators and rock stars for acclaim and the political equivalent of fan worship and with the word ‘felon’ attached to his name for Easley those days are gone. That a pretty fair dose of punishment.
Still, there is a gremlin lurking in the works. A restless ghost in the machine. Because the Easley case wasn’t just about law it was about democracy and Prosecutor Kenerly’s plea bargain means we will never hear McQueen Campbell testify about his deals with Easley or hear the Chancellor at NCSU tell how Mrs. Easley got her job or hear from the other wheeler-dealers who gave Easley free cars and airplane flights and vacations.
Those stories are now buried and the reason they’re buried may be because it’s politicians who write the laws and they’ve written them so one of the hardest things on earth is to convict a North Carolina politician of corruption – so maybe the graft was legal and Kenerly couldn’t convict Easley.
As one lawyer told me bluntly: Look. Easley gave a developer environmental permits. And the developer gave Easley a $137,000 discount on a lot. But that doesn’t prove anything. To convict Easley the prosecutor has to prove Easley said to the developer, ‘Okay, here’s the deal: I get the discount and in return you get the permits.’ But what if Easley (who’s a former Attorney General) had enough sense to say, ‘I want the discount and I think you deserve those permits’ – then winked and added – ‘but there can’t be any connection between the two’ – if that’s what happened no matter how morally outraged you or the News and Observer are, legally, that’s not a bribe.’
So maybe a plea bargain for one measly helicopter flight was as close to justice as Kenerly could get but at the same time he might have been wiser to have tried the case and lost because at least he’d have laid the answers to the questions out on the table where the people who elect Governors could see them and make up their own minds about corruption but now that’s never going to happen. Because the secret’s are buried.
Buried Secrets
2010-12-06/
By not indicting Governor Easley, Joe Cheshire says, District Attorney William Kenerly proved Easley’s innocent and not just innocent but a victim too. The Governor, Cheshire says, has been ‘trashed’ by the villains in the press.
And he has a case: The newspapers report the Governor’s done everything from swapping developers permits in exchange for sweetheart deals on beach front lots to getting his wife a $850,000 job at NCSU and now Cheshire’s arguing, ‘If the prosecutors could have proved one of these sweetheart deals they would have. They couldn’t. So they didn’t. Which proves the Governor’s hands are clean.
For his part, Prosecutor Kenerly says his plea bargain with the Governor did serve the ends of justice. And he has a point too: No one really wanted Mike Easley to go to prison and Easley’s been paying lawyers so long he’s broke and out of work and all but unemployable and I suspect Easley has the same need as other Governors, Senators and rock stars for acclaim and the political equivalent of fan worship and with the word ‘felon’ attached to his name for Easley those days are gone. That a pretty fair dose of punishment.
Still, there is a gremlin lurking in the works. A restless ghost in the machine. Because the Easley case wasn’t just about law it was about democracy and Prosecutor Kenerly’s plea bargain means we will never hear McQueen Campbell testify about his deals with Easley or hear the Chancellor at NCSU tell how Mrs. Easley got her job or hear from the other wheeler-dealers who gave Easley free cars and airplane flights and vacations.
Those stories are now buried and the reason they’re buried may be because it’s politicians who write the laws and they’ve written them so one of the hardest things on earth is to convict a North Carolina politician of corruption – so maybe the graft was legal and Kenerly couldn’t convict Easley.
As one lawyer told me bluntly: Look. Easley gave a developer environmental permits. And the developer gave Easley a $137,000 discount on a lot. But that doesn’t prove anything. To convict Easley the prosecutor has to prove Easley said to the developer, ‘Okay, here’s the deal: I get the discount and in return you get the permits.’ But what if Easley (who’s a former Attorney General) had enough sense to say, ‘I want the discount and I think you deserve those permits’ – then winked and added – ‘but there can’t be any connection between the two’ – if that’s what happened no matter how morally outraged you or the News and Observer are, legally, that’s not a bribe.’
So maybe a plea bargain for one measly helicopter flight was as close to justice as Kenerly could get but at the same time he might have been wiser to have tried the case and lost because at least he’d have laid the answers to the questions out on the table where the people who elect Governors could see them and make up their own minds about corruption but now that’s never going to happen. Because the secret’s are buried.