Greeley
As you sat through the hours of testimony, it was hard to see Michael McCarthy’s case as anything but a political prosecution that wasted thousands of tax dollars.
After two very long days of witnesses and legal maneuvering, a six-member jury took less than an hour Friday to acquit McCarthy of harassing a sheriff’s deputy and resisting arrest while protesting an October 2004 campaign appearance by President Bush.
“The process worked,” McCarthy’s attorney, Lee Christian, proclaimed happily.
Not exactly.
Through a spokeswoman, Republican District Attorney Ken Buck denied that politics played any role in the way the McCarthy matter progressed.
The timeline sure looked weird.
At first, McCarthy was charged with disorderly conduct for obnoxiously shaking a “Veterans for Kerry and Edwards” sign in the face of Weld County Deputy John Tucker.
When Christian, a constitutional law expert, took McCarthy’s case and tried to make it about free speech, prosecutors changed strategy. In May, they added harassment to the disorderly conduct charge, contending McCarthy hit Tucker over the head with the sign. In June, prosecutors added charges of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest. In September, the original disorderly conduct charge disappeared.
What was left skirted the First Amendment but carried up to two and a half years in jail.
“This case isn’t any different from any other,” said DA spokeswoman Thea Mustari. “It’s our job and right to amend charges if we don’t think the charges match the facts.”
Still, as Buck’s minions added and subtracted allegations, questions arose about the zealous pursuit of McCarthy.
Christian couldn’t help but conclude that Buck’s politics played a role.
“He was in the front row of this rally for President Bush,” Christian said. “He used to work for Dick Cheney.”
Although the DA’s website brags that then-Congressman Cheney hired Buck to work on the Iran-contra investigation in 1986, Mustari said Buck told her to say: “Our office isn’t going to comment on whether (Buck) was at the rally or whether he worked for Dick Cheney. This case had nothing to do with politics.”
That would be a lot easier to accept if prosecutors had offered anything resembling conclusive evidence last week in a packed Greeley courtroom.
First, Judge Lynn Karowsky threw out the obstruction charge for lack of evidence. Then, neither prosecution nor defense witnesses remembered seeing McCarthy hit Tucker with the Kerry sign. Striking the deputy with the sign constituted the harassment that led to the arrest that McCarthy supposedly resisted.
“The fact that no one supported the deputy’s version of events was key,” Christian said.
Meanwhile, witness accounts conflicted about what happened just before the confrontation. Prosecution witnesses, who were Bush supporters, said McCarthy provoked Tucker by muscling through the crowd and reaching over people to wag his sign in Tucker’s face. Defense witnesses, who were Bush protesters, said Tucker sided with an anti-abortionist who tore up a Bush protester’s sign. Then, Tucker chided another protestor, prompting McCarthy to shove his sign at the deputy.
Tucker denied playing favorites. But he did admit going into the crowd and trying to put McCarthy in a wrist lock for an attack that no one else could recall.
This case hemorrhaged reasonable doubt. It made you wonder why prosecutors let it to go to trial.
Christian called it a “vindictive prosecution.” He insists that prosecutors only offered his client plea bargains that included jail time.
The DA’s spokeswoman would not confirm that.
“We did,” she said, “what we thought was most appropriate.”
In embarrassingly short order for the Weld County district attorney, so did the jury.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
