Ronnie Earle Takes A Mulligan

After years of effort, Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle finally got an indictment against Rep. Tom DeLay. Unfortunately for Earle, the law under which DeLay was indicted was not enacted until after the "crime" was committed (from Drudge).

The AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN reports, Travis County prosecutors rushed Monday to fix problems with an indictment against DeLay by charging him "with the first-degree felony of money laundering.

Last week a Travis County grand jury ended its term by indicting DeLay on a charge that accused him of conspiring to violate state campaign finance laws. The problem with that indictment, according to DeLay's lawyers, was that the conspiracy law did not apply to the election code in 2002.

The Texas Legislature changed the law, which went into effect Sept. 1, 2003. That left Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle and his assistants presenting a complicated case to a group of grand jurors on their first day of meeting. Prosecutors hoped to fix the problem by reindicting DeLay on charges that he conspired to launder corporate money into political donations. In 2002, the conspiracy law applied to money laundering.

In other words, Earle blew it on the first indictment and therefore had to have his team cobble together another indictment which they managed to get out of a grand jury that had been seated for less then a day.

It'll never fly.