Following is an Associated Press story from the Bangor Daily News:
Tobin's phone jam verdict reversed
By Judy Harrison
Thursday, March
22, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
BANGOR - A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction
and sentence of a long-time Republican strategist accused of taking part in a
phone-jamming plot in New Hampshire on Election Day 2002.
James Tobin, 46, of Bangor was found guilty 15 months ago of conspiring to make more than 800 repeated hang-up calls for about an hour to a phone bank set up by the state Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters' union.
He was acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiring to deprive New Hampshire residents of their right to vote after a six-day jury trial in December 2005 in Concord, N.H.
Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison the following May and
ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. He has been free on bail pending the outcome of
his appeal.
Oral arguments were presented in January to a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston made up of Judges Michael Boudin of Boston, Juan R. Tourruella of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Jeffrey R. Howard of Concord, N.H. Their decision was unanimous.
They ruled that the harassment statute under which Tobin was convicted "is not a close fit" for what Tobin did -it found that the trial judge's interpretation of the law was too broad - and questioned whether the government showed that Tobin had an intent or purpose to harass.
"Oh my God, wow, you know sometimes there is no justice," said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan. "The fact of the matter is that the Republican state party and its people interfered with Election Day activities by jamming our phone lines, and it was wrong."
Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman, said prosecutors were reviewing the decision. He did not say if they planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A new trial is highly unlikely given the 1st Circuit's ruling and the difficulty in proving
Tobin's intent.
Efforts to reach Tobin and his attorneys were unsuccessful Wednesday.
His pastor, the Rev. James Haddix of All Souls Congregational Church in Bangor, said that Tobin had called him Wednesday afternoon to tell him of the appeals court's decision. Haddix testified at Tobin's sentencing.
"I was thrilled," Haddix said. "He was calling his pastor. We've been very close to
him through this whole situation. I was relieved and I trust he was.
"Many of us have been praying for this kind of a resolution," the minister continued.
"The congregation has been very supportive of the Tobins and the family and have
always wished them well."
Maine Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, who has known Tobin since he was 10 years old, also attended several days of Tobin's trial.
Tobin's parents and sisters are Diamond's constituents.
"I'm pleased for him and his family," Diamond said Wednesday after getting a call earlier in the day about the appeal. "It must be a huge, huge relief. Now he can move on and get over this hurdle."
At the time of the phone jamming, Tobin was a regional official with the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, overseeing Senate campaigns in several states, including New Hampshire and Maine. He went on to serve as President Bush's New England re-election campaign chairman in 2004, but resigned after the phone-jamming allegations surfaced.
The 2002 ballot in New Hampshire included a hotly contested race in which Republican John Sununu defeated then-Gov. Jeanne Shehean for the Senate.
The jamming plot led to four criminal prosecutions, a civil lawsuit and a flurry of political attacks.
Tobin was convicted of putting Charles "Chuck" McGee, 37, of Manchester, N.H., the former executive director of the state's Republican Party, in touch with Allen Raymond, 40, of Maryland, a Washington, D.C., political consultant who found an Idaho firm to place the hundreds of hang-up calls. A co-owner of that firm at the time, Shaun Hansen of Spokane, Wash., pleaded guilty in November to a conspiracy charge and to making the calls and awaits sentencing.
McGee and Raymond pleaded guilty of being part of the conspiracy in which Tobin vehemently denied taking part and have served sentences of less than a year each in federal prisons.
"That's wonderful news," McGee said.
McGee declined to say if he agreed with the decision and said the ruling had nothing to do with him.
"It's something in my past," McGee said.
Republican leaders said the party paid for Tobin's legal bills with the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly because he assured them he had done nothing wrong. Williams and Connolly's other clients have included Bill and Hillary Clinton. "We are pleased for Jim and his family," said Dan Ronayne, an RNC spokesman. He declined to comment further.
Also Wednesday, New Hampshire Democrats wrote to Congress asking for an inquiry into whether political interference delayed prosecution of the case until after the 2004 elections. Democrats and Manchester police contacted federal authorities about the incident in 2003. Sullivan, the state party chairwoman, said the furor over alleged political firings of eight federal prosecutors prompted the move.
"Both the failure to name Tobin and the failure to charge him in the summer of 2004 give rise to the likelihood that he was being shielded from public scrutiny until after the president's election in November," Democrats said in the letter.
Following is a story in Opednews.com
Federal court ruling over ex-Bush campaign manager forces first test following firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys
by Michael Richardson
http://www.opednews.com/
The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has set the stage for the first
test of courage for a U.S. Attorney since the firings of eight federal
prosecutors.
The appellate court, located in Boston, ruled that James Tobin's conviction for phone-jamming in the 2002 New Hampshire general election be set aside and remanded the case back to U.S. District Court where federal prosecutors will now have to consider a retrial of Tobin.
What makes this a test case for courage is Tobin's high-level status in President Bush's re-election campaign. Until Tobin was forced to resign in October 2004, after
being linked to the 2002 phone-jamming operation, he was the New England
Campaign Manager for George Bush. The Republican National Committee has thus far spent over $2.5 million dollars defending Tobin with a bevy of high-priced
Washington D.C. lawyers at the firm Williams and Connolly. Tobin's local defense
lawyer was Thomas Rath, a member of the New Hampshire delegation to the
Republican National Committee.
Tobin, convicted December 15, 2005, had asked to be set free of the charges over harassing phone calls but the appellate court instead returned the case to the trial court for disposition. The appellate judges agreed that a jury instruction was overly broad and dismissed the conviction on that account. However, the court found much wrong with Tobin's conduct and declared a jury could still convict him.
In 2002, Tobin was the New England director of the Republican National Committee and on a trip to New Hampshire was approached by the state GOP executive director Charles McGee about disrupting the Democrat get-out-the-vote drive on election day. Tobin connected McGee with GOP Marketplace headed by political telemarketer Allen Raymond and the plot to jam Democrat telephones was hatched. Included in the jamming was a voter-ride phone line operated by Manchester firefighters.
Raymond, a high-level operative, also was the director of the Republican Leadership
Conference and testified he got the okay to proceed with the plot from Kenneth
Goss, a former associate general counsel for the Federal Elections Commission.
Federal prosecutor Andrew Levchuk took a different view of the "dirty scheme" in
his opening words at Tobin's trial, "A line has been crossed here, the line that
separates old-fashioned, hard-knuckled politics from crime."
Both McGee and Raymond pleaded guilty and received jail time and fines for their role in the scheme. Tobin was convicted by a federal jury after refusing to testify in his own behalf and was sentenced last May to 10 months imprisonment, two years of supervision, and a $10,000 fine. McGee was told upon sentencing to seven months
imprisonment that his crime was "hideous and strikes at the very heart of
American democracy." Raymond, who got three months in jail, was lectured at his
sentencing about the failure of his "personal moral compass."
The appellate court determined that a jury could find Tobin guilty of conspiracy and that Tobin's role in aiding and abetting in the crime was clear. However, the court
found that a jury instruction on intent was overly broad and thus remanded the
case to the trial court for further proceedings over Tobin's "unattractive
conduct."
Unanswered questions, including the role of the White House, ratchet up the significance of the high-profile case. The Associated Press has reported that Tobin made over a hundred phone calls to the White House political affairs office, headed by Ken Mehlman, who has also served as chair of the Republican National Committee, between September 17th and November 22nd. Of most
interest are the two dozen calls by Tobin in a three-day period while the plot
was being hatched. Another questionable election day call to the White House was
a 17 minute call by Jayne Millerick, then a GOP consultant and later New
Hampshire Republican Chairwoman, who told the AP she couldn't remember what she talked about.
Meanwhile, Raymond's bill for the phone jam was $15,600, which appear to be linked to three $5,000 donations in the week before the election to the New Hampshire Republican Party. Disgraced Tom Delay's PAC, Americans for a
Republican Majority, ponied up $5,000 and convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff
arranged for two of his Indian tribe clients to each donate $5,000 of gambling
money to the GOP warchest.
It is now up the U.S. Attorney to decide whether to drop the unanswered questions and give Tobin a get-out-of-jail card or to risk political firing for seeking a retrial of the ex-Republican honcho.
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