Another selective prosecution cases in Alabama. Part two.

Meet USA Alice Martin who prosecuted Sue Schmitz. What is interesting about Martin is that the investigator was under investigation. Martin had been under investigation for several years for perjury in connection with legal proceedings. Hat tip to Harper Magazine. Here is an excerpt:

The Alice Martin Perjury Inquiry

September 8, 2007

Background of the Perjury MatterIn May 2002, Martin fired a young assistant U.S. attorney named Deidra Brown who had been working in the Huntsville office. Brown is an African-American. She filed an EEOC complaint in which she alleged that she had been fired as an act of retaliation for assisting Brown’s former supervisor, H. Victor Conrad, who had also filed an EEOC complaint against Martin.

In defending the Brown EEOC complaint, Martin stated under oath that she made her decision to fire Brown based entirely on external factors, and free from any knowledge of Brown’s involvement supporting her former supervisor on his EEOC case. This claim was not circumstantial—it was the very core of her defense. In fact, Martin testified that she did not know about Conrad’s EEOC claim until March 2003, that is, almost a year after she fired Brown. Here’s the key clip from Martin’s deposition of May 28, 2003 (p. 32 of the Transcript):

Q: When was it, the first time that you knew that Mr. Conrad had an EEO claim pending against [you]?. . .
A: In the last couple of months.
Q: You weren’t aware that [Conrad] had filed his claims in December 2000 and June of 2001?. . .
A: No.
There is at least one other passage in her sworn testimony in which she denies knowing about the EEO claim.

Now Martin had received a December 20, 2001 letter which set out this claim in some detail. The letter, delivered by FedEx, was marked “personal and confidential—to be opened by addressee [Martin] only.” Martin has admitted receiving, opening and examining the letter. Her claim now is apparently that she forgot what the letter was about. Martin also testified that she had no knowledge of correspondence between her First Assistant, Jim Lewis, and Conrad. There were six written communications between Conrad and Lewis.

Now Martin is claiming that she knew nothing about the communications between Lewis and Conrad because a “wall” had been put in place so that she would “be able to render an objective decision in the future.” But of course that very claim undermines her contention that she knew nothing: what was this objective decision supposed to be about?

A further very disturbing element lies in a March 18, 2002 email dispatched from the head of the Huntsville U.S. Attorney’s office, Will Chambers, to Martin. Chambers spelled out Conrad’s claims in the EEO suit in some detail and he notes that Brown was assisting Conrad in putting together his case. Here’s how Martin responded in a deposition looking into what she had understood from Chambers’s email:

Q: When was the first time that you became aware that Deidra Brown had any involvement in Vic Conrad’s EEO case?. . .
A: Define what you mean by “involvement.”. . .
Q: Did you know on or about March 18, 2002, that there was some involvement between Deirdra Brown and Vic Conrad regarding complaints? . . .
A: No. What I know is that Will Chambers reports that Brown has advised him that Conrad is in the final stages of preparing a lawsuit. I don’t know what the lawsuit’s about, and I don’t know whether a claim is the same as a lawsuit.

Okay, so Martin did receive and read the email. And she’s engaging in word-splitting that would top even the Monica Lewinsky-era testimony of President Clinton. “Define involvement,” she says, and then “I don’t know whether a claim is the same as a lawsuit.” Remember, this is not a layperson. Martin is not merely a lawyer; she is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer within an important jurisdiction.

Internal DOJ Investigation

How does the Bush Administration’s Justice Department deal with facts like these? In August 2004, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) received copies of the deposition transcript, the Chambers email and related documents with a request to fully consider a claim of perjury against Martin. OPR declined action. The letter from OPR brushing off the claim was ludicrous. It suggested that the perjury matter should have been addressed in the EEOC proceedings. EEOC, of course, had no jurisdiction to entertain such a matter.