August 3, 2015 5:04 PM

HK: Paxton jeopardy fundamentally different and has possibility of metastasizing

Allegations not about political chicanery but instead swindling innocent civilians, the same kind of financial corruption that spawned the Tea Party after the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Among the dozen or so statewide officeholders indicted over the last couple of decades, few have ever been convicted or served time. In many cases, the prosecution case was weak as when a state district judge directed the acquittal of Kay Bailey Hutchison because, as he told the jury, “the prosecution apparently has no theory of its case.”

With the exception of the Tom DeLay case which was needlessly dragged out because an all-Republican appellate court ignored then prosecutor Ronnie Earle’s request for an expedited review of the challenge to the finding of guilt and let the case languish for four years.

In others, the high-priced defense lawyers simply out-lawyered the public sector prosecutor. Nevertheless, jurors have generally leaned sympathetically to political chicanery.

By Harvey Kronberg