6 thoughts on “The Proersecution Continues”

  1. No offense, but this makes the whole thing sound a lot more serious now. Basically, it appears to me that Stadd steered $10 million or so to the university in order to reap $450k for his business. That seems a typical return for a kickback rather than a guy a bit ignorant of conflict of interest laws. Plus he apparently did something similar for the University of Maryland as well where his firm reaped another $250k.

  2. Basically, it appears to me that Stadd steered $10 million or so to the university in order to reap $450k for his business.

    If he had a good case on that, why wasn’t it the charge in the first place? Why wait so long? And you haven’t seen the evidence, so it can only “appear to you” based on the reporting of the indictment.

  3. Having seen what kind of a fictional monster creative prosecutors were able to spin my dad into being, I tend to take this sort of stuff the way it is supposed to be taken in this country–“innocent until *proven* guilty”. I can’t say that means Courtney is innocent–I barely know the guy, but I don’t have a lot of faith in the integrity of government prosecutors.

    ~Jon

  4. Interesting. Color me utterly unimpressed, except by the hypocrisy endemic in a system where a Congressman can do exactly the same thing and be celebrated as “bringin’ home the bacon” instead of being hit with Federal charges.

    Anyway, if I were on the jury, the only question I’d have is whether the contract was fulfilled satisfactorily or not. If he steered a $600,000 contract to a firm that screwed it up — and he should have known it would — then by all means hammer him for knowingly wasting my money. There’s harm there. But if he steered a $600,000 contract to a firm that did the job perfectly well, and just happened to help him personally along the way, I view that as a perfectly reasonable perk, and no harm has been done, except perhaps to the egos of regulators who wrote the rules. Not to mention it happens all the time in the awarding of grants, although with enough winking and plausible deniability to avoid this kind of situation. He’s guilty of, at most, being clumsy.

    And no, I don’t give a damn what the actual rules in the Federal code are. Justice is based on moral principles of harm and not-harm, not arbitrary rules. That’s why we really ought to keep it out of the hands of lawyers, but it’s too late for that, I guess.

  5. No offense, but this makes the whole thing sound a lot more serious now. Basically, it appears to me that Stadd steered $10 million or so to the university

    To put this into perspective, the “slap on the wrist” Courtney received in Round 1 was stiffer than the “stern punishment” Lisa Nowak received.

  6. Once upon a time in America, prosecutors brought charges, juries decided guilt, and judges decide sentences. Apparently now prosecutors can tell judges “keep trying until you get the result I want”.

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