Montgomery Advertiser Shows Its Bias

Today's Montgomery Advertiser has the following headline regarding the Siegelman case: "Legal experts: Weakness, lack of evidence doom case."

The report goes on to quote two "legal experts," both of whom question the foundations of the case and say that the prosecution never should have gone to court to begin with. However, it turns out that both "experts" have close Siegelman connections.

The two people interviewed in the Advertiser story are Joe Espy and Stephen Glassroth. Both are attorneys, which might qualify them as "legal experts," but their real "expertise" lies in covering for Don Siegelman. Joe Espy is identified in the story as one of Siegelman's lead attorneys in the case that was just dismissed. Stephen Glassroth is identified as a Montgomery criminal defense attorney who serves as secretary of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). The Advertiser left out the fact that he also happens to be the attorney for Lanny Young, a landfill developer who has been indicted for allegedly bribing a Cherokee County Commission chairman with $65,000 in return help getting permissionto build and operate a landfill, and later to ensure that the Commission would let him transfer the permit to another landfill company as part of yet another bribe. Mr. Young is (of course) a close associate of both Don Siegelman and Paul Hamrick. It's amazing how many crooks these two guys hang out with on a regular basis. This stuff really makes my head spin.