On some level you’ve got to feel sorry for Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson. When you’re caught with $ 90,000 in (literally) cold hard cash in your freezer, and their are witnesses ready to testify against you, there really isn’t much you can do.
Which is why he has apparently chosen to play the race card:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 — Representative William J. Jefferson said Friday that the Justice Department was trying him in Virginia, and not Washington, because it knew that a jury in the capital would probably include many more fellow African-Americans.
Lawyers for Mr. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who is charged with corruption, demanded in court papers that the trial be moved to Washington, where the population is mostly black and where many of the crimes are said to have occurred, from the mostly white suburbs of Northern Virginia.
Mr. Jefferson is accused of hiding $90,000 in bribe money in his home freezer in Washington.
“The circumstances here present a prima facie case that venue was selected in the Eastern District of Virginia in order to obtain a jury pool with fewer African-Americans,” his lawyer, Robert P. Trout, wrote in papers filed in Alexandria, Va., where the lawmaker was indicted in June.
“The court has an obligation to ensure that the forum selection in this case was not tainted by radically discriminatory motive,” Mr. Trout added. “The center of gravity of this case is plainly not in the Eastern District of Virginia. The overwhelming majority of the events took place in the District of Columbia.”
The filing is Mr. Jefferson’s most clear-cut effort to suggest a racial motivation by prosecutors.
Apparently, desperate times call for desperate measures.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Don’t feel sorry for Mr. Jefferson. He’ll come out o.k. on this. Being a Democrat, he can do whatever to hell he wants to do with impunity. Only Republicans have to worry about being caught-up in some illegal activity.