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Yesterday after the sentencing of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections employees Jaqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer for their part in the rigging of a 2004 ballot recount, a friend called asking my opinion. He wanted to know if I thought that these ladies deserved the sentence they received and if I thought they were covering for their higher ups at the BOE.

My response at the moment was - “no, they didn’t deserve the sentence they received;” and “yes, I thought they were covering for their superiors.”

Upon further reflection though I think I had it completely backwards - “yes, they deserved the sentences they received;” and “no, I don’t think they were covering for their superiors.”

I came to this later conclusion after considering not only this case, but also the Scooter Libby trial in Washington. In many ways they are similar: government employees caught up in a political web of half truths and blame, the public calling for a scalp to satisfy their lust for vigilante justice and a justice system guilty because of it perfect imperfections.

In the CuyCo BOE case we had two middle managment level employees carrying out tasks and procedures that they had often followed previously. In terms of operational controls they were following the Ben Doin (as in ‘we’ve been doing’ it that way forever) manual for ballot handling and counting. From my understanding of the case particulars, their pre-sorting of a ballot sample for a recount does seem rather peculiar, but it was a standard (but unwritten) protocol. When it was discovered through a special investigation / witch hunt that this practice took place, the special prosecutor hoped to use Maiden and Dreamer as a vehicle to get to their superiors at the Board. When no conspiracy could be uncovered the prosecutor attempted to apply pressure on the ladies by offering leniency should they choose to implicate BOE Director Michael Vu and/or Deputy Director Gwen Dillingham. Neither woman was willing to rat on their bosses (nor according to their own testimony could they, because they insisted that Vu and Dillingham were not involved). While the facts of the case pointed an obvious finger of blame at the Director and Deputy Director, no evidence led to such a claim. All during this process, the local (and occasionally national) media fanned the flames of public outrage. Someone would have to pay for this injustice.

At the time of the sentencing Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan proclaimed from the bench, “I can’t help but feel there’s more to this story that we don’t know.”

In the end Maiden and Dreamer would pay for not elaborating on their stories - each with an 18 month sentence.

The Libby case parallels that of the BOE in that once again you had an investigation that begged for a big guy’s scalp (in this case Vice President Dick Cheney or White House advisor Karl Rove) and ended up with an underling. Again the media circled like hungry sharks in a violent sea hoping that the special prosecutor would satisfy their bloodlust and crack through a veneer that insulated Cheney and Rove. As with the BOE case, no evidentiary connection could be made to implicate the Vice President or Rove and we were left with an underwhelming case of perjury.

After the jury passed judgement on Libby’s guilt, a member of the deciding body said in recalling the jury’s deliberations, “what is HE doing here? Where is Rove and all these other guys. … I’m not saying we didn’t think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells [his lawyer] put it, he was the fall guy.”

What’s all of this got to do with the original premise that indeed these defendants received fair verdicts and (in the CuyCo case) sentences (Libby’s sentencing is months away)?

The system did its job. It found wrongdoing, adjudicated it and returned with guilty verdicts.

And it’s this last thing that demonstrates why our justice system is guilty because of its perfect imperfections. While everyone believes that both cases didn’t get to the truth of the matter, both passed judgement based on the facts that were given. The defendants in these cases were all guilty. Unfortunately (for the majority of the public), they’re not the ones who should have been on trial.