Alabama Attorney Lawyer

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — There is fear in the halls of the Alabama State House. Your colleague may be wired. Somebody may be watching you. An indictment looms.
After a dozen citations legislators get a day last month, in a criminal investigation, an atmosphere of fear and paranoia, raids on the gleaming white building, the houses of the State Legislature, saying many of its inhabitants.

Legislators are fixed to their offices for bugs. Routine votes prevented bargaining, fear, it could be misinterpreted. A monitor the legislature agrees to a reporter that to a large open parking. After-hours get-together are off.

The concern is the result of a long-term study of the federal government in corruption in the government of the two colleges of the year has meant that the pleas by the authors of bribery and corruption expense of a state legislator, and the system of the former chancellor. The Birmingham News reported that during the year 2006, one quarter of the 140 members of the legislature had financial relationships at school with the greatest number of jobs or orders to legislators or their relatives . Recent reports show that the number to nearly one-third of the legislature.

The concern is all the more serious because the investigation is focusing on Democrats in the last stepping stone to the legislative power of the state, and finding in the context of intense partisan feeling ill. Many claim it is a former governor, Don Siegelman, was sentenced by prosecutors of Confederation, in the past year and was jailed divorced, because he is a democrat.

Anger among Democrats, was to stir again last week when Mr. Siegelman in a federal prison released after nine months of the loan to a federal court in Atlanta, said that his appeal had important questions.

Legislators say they do not want are only points of the same policy of continuity, as the former governor, whose case has advertising in Congress.

“There is a direct link between the collapse and Siegelman, what happens here,” said one legislator, raccoons nervous. Like many, he refused to quotieren after the name.

“There is a worrying factor,” said another legislator. “It is perhaps a little frightening.”

A spokesman of the Confederation for prosecutors, 100 miles north of Birmingham, went to react. The United States, counsel for the Northern District of Alabama, Alice Martin, who was once Mr. Siegelman, recently said in a statement that the investigation of a “culture of corruption and beneficiaries, and she has promised to follow the players from him.

At the heart of the investigation is an institution, Alabama was born and nurtured policy: the dozens of junior colleges, former Gov. George C. Wallace, sometimes to reward allies.

Populism in a precarious state class public schools, the system is also a scandal winkend cash kitty saw that in the course of the year. The former Federal Chancellor, Roy Johnson, himself once the influence of legislators, recently pleaded guilty to a corruption and Kickback. Mr. Johnson acknowledged the $ 18 million business-to-contractors for the commissions. Another former legislator has pleaded guilty, with public money gambling to pay debts.

“It is very clear that this is a corrupt system, and has been for a long time, and I think it is healthy, what we have so far, cleaning it up”, representatives said Mike Hubbard, the house and the market leader minority president of Alabama Republican Party.

Traditionally, the Alabama legislature, most Democrats, jobs in the two colleges of the year is well entrenched, the question seems to be to follow the State attorneys is whether any job. The answer emphatische democratic page necessarily “yes”. But even if it is not the legislators and their advocates ask since when a zero is a federal crime?

“It could be the whole universe in this prison,” said Senator Lindsey WH State, was a democrat who are not invited. “Some people do not understand the work.”

Lawyers for the state “was explicitly at the corner of the recent arrest of representatives of the State Sue Schmitz, a district in northern Alabama. The government said Ms. Schmitz has collected thousands of dollars for a Make work, no-show job in the two-year college system.

Ms. Schmitz lawyer, Herman Watson, said she is 63 years old, a grandmother and a teacher hired. Mr. Watson said that Ms. Schmitz was awakened in his house before dawn, six members of the Confederation, two of them were armed. He was handcuffed, Mr. Watson said, in tears, in the prison.

“She’s never been arrested in his life,” he said. “It is simply overwhelming. It is simply killed. Obviously, it was unnecessary. A phone call would have not already done so.”

Ms. Martin spokesman declined to respond to Mr. Watson, on behalf of Ms. Schmitz were arrested.

For lawyers, legislators instructed to say, there are similarities with the prosecution of Mr. Siegelman - in particular, the government prefers a panel of high-level loads rather discreet in an interview prosecution.

“Instead of questioning, they were interviewed, they stand before the Grand Jury, forces come and intimidated, or the fifth,” said Doug Jones, a lawyer for some of the legislators.

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