Two cases, unrelated other than that they have both been discussed here in the past.
Guilty:
Charles Taylor.
International judges have found former Liberian leader Charles Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war, at his trial in The Hague.
Taylor has been on trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone for almost five years.
He was accused of backing rebels who killed tens of thousands during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.
But he was cleared of ordering their crimes.
Not Guilty:
Ozawa Ichirou (I. Ozawa)
Influential Japanese politician Ichiro Ozawa has been found not guilty in a funding scandal.
Mr Ozawa, dubbed Japan's "shadow shogun" because of the backroom power he wields, had been accused of violating political fundraising laws.
Oh well, burden of proof and all that.
4 comments:
Well, heck, I hope Converse comes out with a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars with prison bars on them to commemorate the verdict.
@Bill
Very nice.
@DG
I thought the Japanese authorities wouldn't even arrest someone without what American DAs would consider a solid case. What happened?
@Will
As I understand it:
There is functionally no "conspiracy" charge here.
They thought they had him on "responsibilty for the acts directed" (and likely did) when they charged him along with his staffers that actually executed the illegal transactions, but the prosecution couldn't make their evidence of his role in the financial misdeeds hold up (they did get all three underlings accused). The defense challenge to the evidence was, basically, no one fingered Ozawa in a confession in the other trials and there was no paper trail. That left the prosecution arguing "he must have known" rather than "he did know" and the court didn't buy it; called it a politically motivated prosecution and pitched the case.
More, for @Will
Despite...
I'm reminded also that the prosecution was mandatory indictment; court hates those, too.
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