{"id":11872,"date":"2014-02-21T09:10:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T15:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=11872"},"modified":"2014-02-21T12:29:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T18:29:21","slug":"banana-republicans-watch-february-21-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=11872","title":{"rendered":"Banana republicans watch: February 21, 2014."},"content":{"rendered":"

You may recall that last year, members of the city council of the notoriously corrupt city of Bell stood trial. One member was completely acquitted of the charges against him; the other five were found guilty on some charges<\/a>, and had mistrials declared on others<\/a>. The prosecution had indicated it planned to retry the cases that ended in mistrials.<\/p>\n

However, the LAT<\/strong> is reporting that the prosecution is playing “Let’s Make a Deal” instead:<\/p>\n

Five former Bell council members accused of looting the small city are scheduled to be in court Friday to consider an offer of a maximum four-year prison term in exchange for their guilty pleas.<\/a>
\nThe former leaders already face possible eight-year prison terms after being convicted on related corruption charges last year, making the four-year offer attractive.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It isn’t clear from the article, but my assumption is that the four-year terms would run concurrently with the eight-year ones, so the council members wouldn’t actually serve any additional time. But first they have to agree to the plea deal, and that doesn’t sound like a sure thing.<\/p>\n

Edited to add: Indeed. The LAT<\/strong> is now reporting that only one out of five former council members expressed any desire to take the deal<\/a>; the prosecution says either all five take the deal, or<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n

Anyway, the lawyers have asked for more time, and it looks like the next hearing will be April 3rd. Watch this space for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may recall that last year, members of the city council of the notoriously corrupt city of Bell stood trial. One member was completely acquitted of the charges against him; the other five were found guilty on some charges, and had mistrials declared on others. The prosecution had indicated it planned to retry the cases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,14,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california-uber-alles","category-clippings","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11872"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11875,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872\/revisions\/11875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}