HAT TIP TO Newsbusters.org. Newsbusters notes that this ruling has been ignored by the media, unlike the great play we received when DeLay was indicted.
| You were expecting something different? |
The stateÂ’s highest criminal court today affirmed the 2005 dismissal of a felony indictment against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two associates. In the 5-4 decision, the court affirmed Judge Pat PriestÂ’s decision to throw out an indictment accusing DeLay and his associates, Jim Ellis and John Colyandro, of conspiring to violate state election laws. The Sugar Land Republican, who retired from Congress in 2006 because of the indictments arising from the 2002 elections, still faces a charge of conspiring to launder corporate money into campaign donations.
In 2005, just months after the indictments, Priest ruled that the stateÂ’s conspiracy statute did not apply to the election code until Sept. 1, 2003, long after the 2002 elections in which DeLayÂ’s political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, spent about $600,000 of corporate money on consultants, professional fundraisers and pollsters as part of an effort to elect a GOP majority to the Legislature. That Republican-dominated Legislature then approved DeLayÂ’s plan to redraw the stateÂ’s congressional map to favor Republicans. |