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In its recent refusal to hear the latest appeal from former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, the Supreme Court should have applied a principle about sentencing it used in a fresh decision on Florida’s death penalty sentencing process. Roger Shuler and Andrew Kreig return to talk about the continuing injustice to Siegelman.Shuler is the courageous blogger who has covered the Siegelman case and the cesspool of Alabama’s legal system for many years. Kreig is the founder of the DC-based Justice Integrity Project, and the author of Presidential Puppetry.
In the Siegelman case, now-disgraced Judge Mark Fuller sentenced the former governor for acts the jury had acquitted Siegelman of. In the recent death penalty case, styled Hurst v. Florida, the Supreme Court overturned Hurst’s death sentence and struck down part of Florida’s capital punishment system because the judge unilaterally imposed the death penalty after the jury merely recommended by 7-5 vote that Hurst be executed.
We discuss how this principle should have been applied to the Siegelman appeal, which was based on Fuller’s over-sentencing of Siegelman.
We also talk about President Obama’s failure to pardon or commute Siegelman’s sentence, and the former governor’s recent stretch in “the hole” after prison officials abruptly cut off an interview he was doing with a substitute host on the Thom Hartmann radio show. We discuss the new documentary expected this summer that recaps the layers of injustice in this case, which will be narrated by Martin Sheen.