Ouch, bad time to flex his muscle as he was a strong contender for the 2016 republican presidential candidate: AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A grand jury indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday for allegedly abusing the powers of his office by carrying out a threat to veto funding for state prosecutors investigating public corruption — making the possible 2016 presidential hopeful his state's first indicted governor in nearly a century. http://news.yahoo.com/texas-perry-indicted-coercion-veto-threat-224901143.html
I don't understand how a sitting Governor can be indited for vetoing a funding bill! Sounds like what he is elected to do inline with the job.
I'm not going to claim to know state or national protocol on legal proceedings against governors, representatives, etc. But this sort of thing annoys me to no end. What does the cost of the attorney, and who it is paid bym have to do with the rest of the story? You see this all the time, ON BOTH SIDES, where you drop a bugget in, and now soon we'll see the outrage over how much public money he is spending, etc. Just report the damned story.
It actually does have significance. Perry has a net worth of about $3M, while the prosecution has unlimited funds. It's only fair that both sides have equal access to the legal system, no? It also doesn't seem right that people who oppose a veto could bankrupt the governor through litigation. As you point out, the taxpayers should know the cost and judge for themselves if they want to be outraged.
Surprised by some of the comments as at the very least it appears he tried to force a District Attorney to resign. This is probably a good thing for the republican party as he can now be eliminated as a presidential candidate rather than all this play out if he was the republican candidate.
Gov't through a budget allocated to the District Attorney's office, like in every criminal case. District Attorney's offices have limited budgets . . . much too low if you ask me, but regardless they have a budget. How much do you think prosecutors make per hour? Should every defendant get a $450.00/hr lawyer so they have "equal access to the legal system"
I'm not neceassarily opposed to his lawyer being publicly paid for, and wasn't trying to say that at all. So I agree that they shouldn't try to bankrupt his private net worth. I was saying it seemed like an unfair attack against him by the media in that it didn't seem tohave relevance to the article, but if you were already angry at him, it was going to be another thing to shake your fist about
The govt. pays for defense lawyers if the defendant can't afford one. The prosecutor and his team worked basically 24/7 on this. Perry's lawyer surely did not.
My guess is the people will rally behind him and his ratings will go up. This seems like a separation of powers issue, not a criminal one. Congress can deny funding what Perry wants by voting it down, Perry can pressure congress via veto threat and the veto itself. I'm pretty sure we saw a similar pressure on Bob Filner, mayor of SD, to resign, and he was never arrested or spent time in jail.
Yeah I do. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-16/texas-governor-perry-indicted-on-abuse-of-power-charge.html What is a special prosecutor's budget? If he needed to interview over 50 people, would lack of funds prevented it? What if he wanted to look at thousands of documents instead of hundreds? It's pretty easy to get a grand jury to indict, as the burden of proof at that point is low. It's even easier to do if it all goes down in a partisan district. Edit: burden of proof to indict is 12 votes out of 23 jurors.
You are right DC . . . prosecutors have unlimited funds. And burden of proof is directly related to number of votes needed to indict.
It's pretty easy to get 12 votes when the jury is comprised of Likely Perry opponents in a politically motivated case. So I'm glad you agree.