repubgazette5-18-07benjaminyoungblooddoyleflipflop

Having Fun

With Mojo

I'm finally ready to change welcome signs

Hey kids! Governor Manchin here! Today, I need your help. Here's what's happening. You know those welcome signs you see every time you drive into West Virginia after some big trip you've taken with Mommy and Daddy? That's right! The ones that say "Open for Business." Well, nobody has ever liked those signs very much, except for me, because they were my idea! But it turns out everybody else hates them! I thought if I left them up there long enough everybody would just forget about them, but they haven't. Everybody still hates them, and everybody still laughs about them behind my back. So I guess I'm gonna change them, 'cause there's an election coming up and I can't have people making fun of me. Most people want them to say "Wild & Wonderful," like they used to, but I can't do that, because that was another governor's idea! So here are my new ideas, and I want you to tell me which one you like best! Ready? Here are your choices:

* West Virginia -- You Can Place Your Bets Almost Anywhere!

* West Virginia -- Still Ahead of Mississippi In Most Things!

* West Virginia -- Moutaineers Are Always Free, Democrats Cost A Little More!

Just pick your favorite, write it down, and send it to me at: "Mojo, Charleston, West Virginia." It will get delivered, I promise!

Doubledown Doyle

Doyle votes for table games,

then calls it a 'lousy deal' and campaigns against it

Politicians have been known to try to have it both ways on issues. In one notorious example regarding a funding bill for the troops in Iraq, John Kerry famously claimed to have voted for it before voting against it.

But Jefferson County Delegate John Doyle manages to top that. In March, Doyle voted for the table games bill. But now, he is campaigning hard to defeat passage of a table games measure in Jefferson County.

In fact, he told West Virginia Public Broadcasting the bill he voted for is a "lousy deal."

Doyle says he voted for the bill because his colleagues in the Northern Panhandle wanted it. In other words, he put the interests of another part of the state ahead of his own district.

Read the Public Broadcasting report on "Doubledown Doyle's" flip flop by clicking here.

girl was forced at gunpoint to perform oral sex, and she and her friends were later threatened with the gun by the defendant. Youngblood was charged with the abduction of three women and the sexual assault of one of them. He eventually went to trial and was convicted and sentenced to 26-60 years. After sentencing, he moved to have the verdict set aside on the basis that the case investigator had discovered new evidence. But the state Supreme Court originally affirmed the conviction by a 3-2 vote.

Then, after the U.S. Supreme Court asked the state court to review its decision based on a possible "Brady" violation -- i.e., the State may not have turned over pertinent evidence (a note found later) to the defense -- Justice Joe Albright switched his vote and joined Justices Larry Starcher and Robin Davis in overturning the conviction and remanding it back for a new trial. Benjamin and Justice Spike Maynard dissented.

Benjamin, whose writings have increasingly taken direct aim at what he sees as the shaky legal foundation of many majority opinions, wrote, "The State did not violate Brady. The note, even if credible, would not have made a difference in the trial's result because, while it may be argued that the note could have impeached its author ... it could not have come in for substantive consideration by the jury because it was inadmissible hearsay."

Adds Benjamin, "Contrary to the opinion of the Majority, this was a call for the circuit court to make following the evidentiary hearing, and this Court should have been reluctant to set aside Youngblood's convictions, particularly the convictions legally distinguishable from the sexual assaults. The note did not fall within the category of impeachment evidence considered to be so exculpatory that the outcome may have been different."

Like the Mullens case before it, the Youngblood case offers another example of the majority of the Court siding against law enforcement by an increasingly consistent 3-2 margin, with Starcher, Albright and Davis in the majority, and Benjamin and Maynard dissenting and ruling on the side of police and prosecutors.

The Kanawha County Commission on Thursday voted to set Aug. 11 as the new date for a special election on a table games bill, after Tri-State Racetrack urged -- actually, told -- the commission to abandon plans for a June 9 election.

Hancock County, meanwhile, set its new date much earlier, June 30. Both counties had failed to meet the requirements of the table games bill calling for published legal notice 30 days prior to the election.

Kanawha Commissioner Kent Carper, who originally pushed to proceed with the June 9 election but suddenly changed his mind after talking with Tri-State officials, gushed over Tri-State's decision to regroup and start over, saying, "Tri-State has continued to be a stand-up corporate citizen in this matter. They have put the interest of the voters above their corporate interest and that's commendable. They have been the most understanding."

The most understanding about what? You would almost think Tri-State is owed something, and they're doing someone a big favor by deciding to obey the law.

Ohio and Jefferson counties are proceeding with a June 9 election on the table games issue.