Lipscomb conviction overturned
Posted on 07/12/2002 6:18:22 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Lipscomb conviction overturned
07/13/2002
A federal appeals court set Al Lipscomb free Friday night, 27 months into the former Dallas City Council member's 41-month home confinement for taking bribes.
Mr. Lipscomb, who is 77 and has a variety of health problems, greeted the news with gratitude at his southern Dallas home.
"I wanted to fall on my knees and just pray," he told a WFAA-TV (Channel 8) reporter. "I'm thankful to all the people who stuck with me."
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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned Mr. Lipscomb's January 2000 conviction because, the justices wrote, U.S. District Judge Joe Kendall abused his discretion by moving the trial to Amarillo over the defense's objections. The three-judge panel ordered a new trial; Mr. Lipscomb will be free in the interim.
The appeals court did not dispute the facts presented at Mr. Lipscomb's trial, which the justices' ruling reiterated in lengthy detail.
At the trial, Yellow Cab Co. owner Floyd Richards testified that he had paid Mr. Lipscomb $1,000 a month for a period of years in return for favorable votes on matters affecting the cab company.
After the payments began, the appeals court wrote, "Lipscomb energetically used many of the tools at the disposal of a Council member his vote, his oversight authority, his agenda-setting power, and his other parliamentary privileges to support policies favorable to Yellow Cab, even though these policies conflicted with his previous positions."
Following his conviction, Mr. Lipscomb apologized publicly for his conduct, saying that he had erred in not including the Yellow Cab payments on his financial disclosure reports.
Judge Kendall moved the trial to Amarillo because, he said, pretrial publicity had made it difficult if not impossible to seat an unbiased jury in Dallas.
However, the appeals court found that he had leaped to that conclusion without citing specific examples of prejudicial publicity or interviewing potential jurors to gauge its effect. His action, they said, was too hasty and violated Mr. Lipscomb's rights.
"The court did nothing more than globally label the unspecified publicity as 'significant' and 'substantial' and state that voir dire in Dallas would be 'no easy task' But surely, this is not the standard for determining whether pretrial publicity renders a trial unfair," the 5th Circuit opinion states.
Judge Kendall said the ruling surprised him and that he still believes he acted within the law.
"My gut feeling is that, from everything that was going on in that case, including the lawyers beginning to try it in the newspapers, as well as the prominence of Al Lipscomb, there is no way that he and the government could have gotten a fair trial in Dallas, Texas," he said.
Mr. Lipscomb said he holds no grudge against the judge, who has since left the bench.
"That was his right to move it, I guess," the former council member said. "They [the court] said it wasn't. I'm not getting off into legalese. But I want it known by all I don't have any animosity toward that man at all."
Mr. Lipscomb reserved his ire for the FBI, suggesting that its agents had manufactured the case against him.
"Judge Joe Kendall reacted behind information that was given to him by the fabricating FBI," he told WFAA-TV (Channel 8), not providing any further details.
The former council member, who was among the most prominent and well revered of Dallas' civil-rights leaders, said he never lost hope during the months of his confinement.
"I felt good about this outcome all the time," he said.
E-mail vloe@dallasnews.com and tbensman@dallasnews.com
For those Freepers outside of Dallas, Al Lipscomb is the local Dallas equivalent of Jesse Jackson, except older and with less class.
Elected Dallas officials don't get a salary from the city. Some local benefactors, in order to ensure that black folks could "afford" to serve, paid the cash, "non-bribes," so the could afford to take public office. We have never had an accounting of how much was paid, to whom, and by whom.
The former Dallas mayor, Ron Kirk, a black, is running for US Senate. His wife earned a half million in stock options as a ten month (?) employee of a company owned by the guy who got the land/rights/tax incentives to build the new Dallas arena on Kirk's watch. The papers refuse to even mention this and related dishonesty as Kirk campaigns for state wide office.
If you want to see dumbocrap corruption of Clintonian proportions, watch Dallas. There will be little coverage but there are some alternative media outlets that might provide so honesty.
Ya know what that means don'tcha? Lemme 'splain it to ya.
[)@##-it, if all the truth did not exscape and inform everbody already.
We needed to go find us some brutha's who ain't herd of our brutha Al yet.
Well, let's start here. If there was anyone who is less qualified than Kirk, I don't know who that would be. His position as mayor was one of presider over the city council. The Dallas city manager is the person who makes all the worthwhile decisions. Kirk is a pissant, plain and simple.
For those of you who are trying to look the word 'pissant' up and can't find it in your funky wagnell's, it means 'One that is insignificant'.
FGS
Understood. Someone needs to open up a can of Cajun whoopha$$ on them yahoos. I was/am as much concerned with the level of public "servant" slithering their way into population center governance. On second thought, they seem to be slithering their way into just about everything.
Sad thing is, I know plenty of otherwise good people who, for whatever reasons, do not vote. Most have simply thrown up their hands and said to hell with it; it doesn't seem to make any difference who gets into office; nothing ever changes. Their wrong(mostly), but it's a tough sell trying to convince them otherwise. But I digress...
BTW, 4th gen Texan??????? I haven't actually tried to figure out how many generations, but yours truly is a descendant of one of Texas' First Families. One side of the family settled Texas when Texas was, well, a country. The other side slipped in across the Sabine River some time later ; )
FGS, Texan-American
Another of my ancestor's, a widow who lost her husband in the Civil War, packed up her kids and moved to Texas. Seems like there were alot of widows in my family. Tough times back then.
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