 |
         
|
In Washington, CBS' justice correspondent Bob Orr got hold of undercover FBI surveillance videotape from a pinhole camera in an hotel room in Juneau, the state capital of Alaska. The black-and-white footage formed part of the back story in an investigation into possible graft by Sen Ted Stevens, the senior Republican. The cameras showed Bill Allen, head of an oil services firm, and a pair of legislators, Pete Kott and Vic Kohring. The trio has been convicted in a $400,000 bribery scheme to deliver tax breaks to VECO, Allen's business. Now, Orr speculated, "even bigger political shoes could drop" as they in turn may be ratting on Stevens and his son Ben, "a former state senator who, Allen says, collected nearly $250,000 in payoffs." On the video Kott brags "I had to cheat, steal, beg, borrow and lie." Neither Stevens fils nor Stevens pere has been charged with any crime.
There may be relief in the scandal of federal prison sentences for cocaine, whereby identical amounts of the drug incur harsher punishment when in its rock variety compared with its powdered form. The federal Sentencing Commission has already equalized the disparity for future convictions. It now proposes commuting past sentences. NBC's justice correspondent Pete Williams reckoned that some 20,000 inmates, many of whom have already served ten to 15 years, will be released an average of two years early. The Justice Department does not see justice in righting this wrong against these inmates, more than 80% of whom are black: "Crack defendants, as a whole, generally have a higher criminal history and a greater use of guns and violence in the manner that they distribute their cocaine," DoJ spokeswoman Deborah Rhodes told Williams.
You must be logged in to this website to leave a comment. Please click here to log in so you can participate in the discussion.
