Members of Congress might take a lesson from what happened to Mr. DeLay as John Nichols of THE NATION wrote on November 27, 2010:
“. . . Few figures in recent American history have abused the public trust with the determination that former House majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, brought to the task. At the height of his power, he was a political animal who ranged the halls of Congress without restraint or remorse. No one in Congress dared constrain the political bully boy who proudly referred to himself as “The Hammer,” and it did not seem as if anyone on the outside would ever attempt to hold DeLay to the standards demanded of petty crooks.
It was as if the Texas Republican—who gave new meaning to the term “pay-to-play,” ridiculed ethics rules and used the redistricting process to make elections in Texas even more meaningless than they had been—was daring prosecutors to go after him.
Finally, in 2005 a courageous local prosecutor (Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle) did just that, indicting the most powerful Congressional Republican on charges of conspiracy to violate election laws by illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate money to candidates in 2002.
The indictment began to unravel DeLay’s power structure, and then his career. Forced to step down as majority leader, he finally left the House in what would for anyone else have been disgrace. . .”
DeLay now faces a minimum of five years probation and a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.
QUEEN’S NOTE: DeLay was to have been sentenced on December 20, just before Christmas. Senior Texas State District Judge Pat Priest put off DeLay’s sentencing on money laundering and conspiracy convictions to January 10, citing scheduling conflicts. Defense attorney Dick DeGuerin requested the delay from December 20.
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Those who say that Rick Perry will just pardon him, not unlike the State Republican Executive Committee who I read were considering creating a resolution to ask Perry to pardon DeLay don’t know diddley about Texas law or History.
Unlike the president, a Texas governor does not have sweeping pardon authority. Thanks to Govs. Ma and Pa Ferguson* selling pardons, the state Constitution limits the governor’s pardon authority. Perry can only grant a pardon on the recommendation of a majority of the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
And DeLay would not be elilgible for a pardon under the board’s rules:
The Board will consider Full Pardon requests for the following cases:
(1) Individuals on parole/mandatory supervision/annual report must have been under supervision for at least one (1) year without any violations during the last twelve (12) months.
(2) Former TDC or TDCJ-ID inmates who have discharged their sentences.
(3) Probated sentences (completed, unless unusual circumstances).
(4) Suspended sentences (completed).
(5) Jail sentences (completed).
(6) Misdemeanor sentences (completed).
What’s not in this list is the fact that the person seeking a pardon also must have exhausted their remedies in court. That means DeLay could not apply until after his appeals are done. The minimum sentence DeLay faces is five years probation, so the earliest he could apply for a pardon would be December 2015, a year after Perry’s new term of office expires.
The only other route is a request for a pardon on the grounds of innocence. But that requires two officers of the court of conviction to certify the defendant was wrongfully convicted. I would not count on the Travis County District Attorney’s office doing that.
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*Ma and Pa Ferguson
Now those two were a pair! They were Democrats and they wrote the book on political survival! Jim (Pa) Ferguson ran for governor and won in 1914. [Back then the governor's term was only for 2 years. Today it is for four years and Texas is one of 14 states with no term limits for governor--scary thought, isn't it?]
Pa Ferguson was impeached during his second term in 1917 so that disqualified him from running for governor again. Among the items on his impeachment list was that he spent state funds for groceries and that the couple had purchased a ukulele with state funds. [By today's standards set by convicted crooks like Tom DeLay, Ma and Pa were innocents.]
So Pa decided that Ma (Miriam Amanda) would run in his place. They launched a “two for one campaign”–not unlike the one the Clintons attempted in 2008. Miriam was no farm woman. She had a genteel upbringing and had graduated from Baylor University. But that didn’t stop the two of them from passing off Ma as a woman of the people. She put on a bonnet and posed with chickens. Like the best of them, they were masters at marketing the “common man” [or woman] appeal. Ma Ferguson was the first woman governor of the Lone Star State in 1925 and the second woman governor in the USA.
Among other things such as declaring January 1926 “Laugh Month for Texas” saying that “a cheerful happy outlook is the best antidote for gloom”, Ma Ferguson issued over 2,000 pardons in her first 20 months. She lost her bid for governor in 1930, but won it again in 1932. She kept right on signing pardons but since it was the Great Depression and it reduced the state’s burdens for taking care of prisoners, there were not so many complaints this time. Somewhere along the way though the Texas legislature created some laws to curb the enthusiasms of governors who wanted to be heavy-handed with the pardon pen.
