60 Minutes: Siegelman Postscript

The 60 Minutes feature on the prosecution and conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman can be found here. While it undoubtedly brought Siegelman’s sad situation to a much wider audience, as a piece of investigative journalism it was a disappointment. It was fine to have former Arizona AG Grant Woods (a Republican) opine that the prosecution was politically motivated, and to have a former Republican operative describe how she was allegedly told by Karl Rove to find evidence of wrongdoing by Siegelman. But scant attention was paid to the heart of the matter: the absence of evidence of a quid pro quo. AP and even the allegedly biased local coverage at the time of the trial made repeated and detailed mention of the defense contention that neither Siegelman nor former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy received any personal benefit from HealthSouth’s contribution to Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery to fund education. The 60 Minutes story only mentioned this in passing. Evidence that the government knew there was no quid pro quo and prosecuted anyway would have been more convincing.