Editorials

Lewis “Scooter” Libby was a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was convicted of perjury in a case where he and others in the White House schemed to expose the identity of a covert CIA agent. A who’s-who list of conservatives appealed to the federal judge, telling him what a swell guy Libby is.

Despite hints that the case could be pushed further up the White House food chain, the prosecutor stopped at the Libby conviction. The judge sentenced Libby to 30 months, well below the many years — at least theoretically — that he could have been locked away. Libby was released and given an unspecified number of weeks to prepare for prison. His case is being appealed.

Don Siegelman is a former governor of Alabama. He was convicted of accepting a bribe of $500,000, which was placed in a pro-lottery campaign fund and not in Siegelman’s pocket. In considering Siegelman’s sentence, the federal judge weighed charges of which the former governor had been acquitted as well as the ones he’d been convicted of.

The judge gave Siegelman more than seven years in prison, almost three times the sentence Scooter Libby received. Siegelman, upon being sentenced, was then hustled off to prison along with Richard Scrushy, the ex-HealthSouth bigwig convicted of giving the bribe in order to be appointed to the state Certificate of Need Board. Both Siegelman and Scrushy say they will appeal.

Grant that comparing federal cases is a slippery slope. Grant that they are as different as the prosecutors who pursue them and the judges who rule over them. But don’t neglect the obvious sentencing disparities in matters that — at their heart — are about public trust. After all, sentencing guidelines and degrees of guilt were created to acknowledge that some acts are worse than others.

A governor accepting a bribe in exchange for a spot on a state board is awful. It’s a crime worthy of jail time. So is dishonestly testifying to the facts surrounding the outing of a covert agent who is protecting U.S. national security.