The Legal Conservative

Well if you remember the October 15th Post on the Motion to Dismiss charges against Sansom and Odom, we predicted the odds of a reversal on appeal would be slim, and the IST DCA has just turned down the appeal as to Sansom and Odom as one that that State had no jurisdiction to file.  Sansom09-5158 T he Rationale: “Plainly, the circuit court’s order here does not dismiss an indictment or any count thereof, and because there is otherwise no statutory authority for the state to appeal in this circumstance, we are without jurisdiction.” Interestingly, they have yet to rule on the Richburg  appeal, because the trial judge in that order did dismiss a count in the indictment and so the State did have jurisdiction to appeal.

Well, as a practical matter, this means that the SA has a greatly weakened case against Sansom and Odom, (as noted earlier, probably not without reason) and if there is an acquittal in the remaining portion of the case, suspect it is unlikely that an appeal of these initial matters will be taken at that time.  SA now has to decide whether the case is even worth bringing on the remaining grounds.

The Trial |Judge Issued his ruling to day on the Sansom official misconduct charges, and dismissed them, leaving only a perjury charge based on Sansom stating that the College had requested the increase in funds and the state contradicting that testimony.Sansom Order Dismissing Official Misconduct.  As we previously noted, the arguments to dismiss were not frivolous, and the likelihood of this order of dismissal being reversed on appeal should be slim. Public outrage does not a crime make.  On the Perjury charge, it will be interesting to see if that testimony before the Grand Jury meets the test of materiality, since the substantive charges have now been dismissed.  The Trial Court held that it was material, since the grand jury had jurisdiction to investigate official misconduct, even if no charge were brought.

See e.g. Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759, 770 (1988) ” A false statement is material if it has a natural tendency to influence, or is capable of influencing, the decision of the decision-making body to which it was addressed.”