MISSOURI WATCH: THE CASE AGAINST BOB GRIFFIN

"On deciding guilt and innocence." These words, written after the verdicts of a federal court jury in the case of the United States versus a former Missouri official and three of his friends/associates/cohorts, are neither about absolute guilt nor pure innocence. Rather these observations are about the political process that has existed in some form for more than two hundred years in America and almost that long in our own state.

I suspect most Missourians, had they been given the opportunity to vote on the outcome of the Bob Griffin, et al, bribery and racketeering case before even one shred of evidence had been presented, would have judged the former House speaker and three other persons, guilty as sin. Those of us who are not trained in the law have our own rules by which we judge guilt and innocence:

1. The defendant is automatically guilty or charges would never have been filed.

2. The facts as reported by the media are convincing enough to render a guilty verdict

3. The defendant's reputation is either good enough or bad enough to render an off-hand judgment.

When one or all three of the above criteria come into play, there is an automatic rush to judgment that oftentimes runs contrary to those who have spent years educating themselves and then practicing the rules in courtrooms. Most citizens, myself included, know little about the finer, more technical points of law, and most of what we have learned stopped in some fifth grade civics class and is only enhanced by whatever casual reading we have pursued since then.

As the O.J. Simpson criminal trial so graphically illustrated, most citizens render a judgment that does not have to be based on facts that are allowable but on emotions. Emotions enable us to render judgments that are hindered neither by the technicalities of the law nor the seemingly arcane method of deciding current jurisprudence by precedence.

The fine print of case law produced three not guilty verdicts of bribery for the former House speaker, while three additional counts for the same crime could not be agreed on, resulting in a hung jury. Interestingly, the person with whom Griffin did most of his transactions, consultant Cathryn Simmons, was found guilty on 14 counts of bribery, with acquittal on two counts of the same charge.

The case was really a mixed bag for all four defendants, with Griffin and a lobbyist found guilty of no crimes at all. That wasn't the verdict of pre-trial public opinion nor the learned judgments handed down on editorial pages.

The Griffin trial has consequences far beyond the fate of four individuals, however. It establishes, as did the Bill Webster case before it, a new standard of official conduct that sends a very clear, even concise, message to the political community in Jefferson City. State governments used to deal with speed limit laws and deer hunting seasons. Today they deal in a wide assortment of vital issues, ranging from who receives and who is denied medical care to how we educate and train the next generation of Missouri citizens.

Conversely, the importance of statewide issues has given a cloak of respectability to win-at-any-cost tactics. For who would deny the right of citizens to pursue, by virtually any means, the right of government to ease the burdens of serious, life-threatening illnesses? Is bribery to secure special treatment for an individual or a corporation really comparable to a campaign against poorly funded schools for hundreds of thousands of school children? Might the latter be seen as a civic duty and the former as nothing more than selfish gain? It would require the wisdom of Solomon to make such distinctions between good and evil and the intent of those pursuing one or the other.

In strong terms, the public has called for -- and elected officials have responded to -- the highest ethical standards in the performance of public service, extending it beyond this duty to include the pursuit of public office. Yet as the split decisions of a Kansas City jury illustrate, this is an almost impossible assignment.

Most of all, the trial points up the extreme difficulty of achieving pure political morality. Indeed, in the prevailing political process the words pure, ethical and morality seldom appear in the same sentence.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor ofF Missouri News and Editorial Service.