Biskupic Owes the Public He Represents in Court an Explanation

I don't have much to add on the overruling of the Georgia Thompson conviction that hasn't already been said here and here, among other places.

The case didn't start off aimed at Thompson. But when Steve Biskupic realized he wasn't going to get anywhere else, he decided to save face by throwing the hammer down as hard as he could on Thompson. He even asked the court for a longer sentence in federal prison. A year and a half wasn't long enough for him; he wanted a full two years.

And maybe not showing up at an appeals hearing on arguably your biggest case of the year is commonplace for US attorneys, but it sure sounds pretty pathetic to me.

There were already questions being raised about Biskupic's place in the US attorneys controversy, and I'm sure this incident will intensify those questions. Time will tell if there's anything to the answers.

I'm sure someone will come out with a defense of Biskupic, claiming that he was only doing his job and if there was nothing to the case the conviction wouldn't have happened in the first place.

But there's almost always a chance for conviction in political cases that are as publicly hyped as the Thompson one. Add to that the reputation federal trials have for being unpredictable -- which is why most defendants take a plea before trial, something Thompson, tellingly, didn't do before her trial or her sentencing -- and the initial conviction looks a lot less impressive.

As Marquette law professor Michael O'Hear put it: "The fact is, the sentences are so tough in the federal system, the best way to get any sort of a break on the sentence is to plead guilty and cooperate. Very few defendants are willing to roll the dice. Even some with very excellent defenses are just not willing to take a chance, because trials are kind of random."

Once a sober audience had a chance to look at the case, though, it took them only a few hours -- when deliberations on cases like this usually take a few weeks -- to toss the conviction and call the prosecution's case "beyond thin." Listening to the audio of the appeals court testimony, it's clear that, as much as anything, the judges were in utter disbelief about why charges were even filed in the first place.

And let's not forget this case, which was practically laughed out of the appeals court, was the state's case. Biskupic was representing the people with this "beyond thin" case.

I think Biskupic owes the public that he represents in court an explanation beyond this useless three sentence statement. What the public deserves to know, among other things, is why Biskupic chose to use public resources on a case that it took an appeals court a virtually unprecedented amount of quickness to dismiss.

If Biskupic wants to wait until the full appeals decision is out, that's fine. But an explanation is owed.

UPDATE: Jessica McBride speculates that Biskupic's flimsy case was just the result of "an aggressive prosecutor":

I am willing to bet that Biskupic looked at the case and thought something was rotten there. He thought, put the screws to the lower level player in the tough case with imperfect evidence to see if she will flip on those really responsible. That's how aggressive prosecutors work.

Considering it landed a woman in federal prison for four months, I hope Biskupic has a better explanation than that it was just a fishing expedition that happened to come up empty.

And trying to land a bigger fish doesn't even start to explain why Biskupic called for two years at sentencing. What was he hoping to get out of that? Did he honestly think she'd sit in her cell for awhile and then decide to finally roll over on someone?

I think he knew full well by sentencing that she wasn't rolling anywhere because there was no one for her to roll over on. That fact was obviously abundantly clear to the three appeals court judges. Which brings us back to the question, what exactly was Biskupic doing with this case?