By David Edwards on 9/30/2005, 2:04pm PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards

In a recent interview on MSNBC's Hardball, Tom DeLay explained how District Attorney Ronnie Earle had duped the grand jury into returning an indictment by saying "Oh sure. You can indict a ham sandwich. This is a ham sandwich without the ham."

DeLay has spun this indictment as a partisan attack by Ronnie Earle. At the same time, he downplays the role of the grand jurors as mere puppets of the prosecutor.

Now, in an interview with News 8 of Austin,the foreman of the grand jury, William Gibson, has stepped forward to defend the indictment:

"It was not a rubber stamp deal. It was not an overnight deal. If we needed extra information, it was provided to us," Gibson said.

...
Gibson thinks there is enough evidence to convict Delay.

"We would not have handed down an indictment. We would have no-billed the man, if we didn't feel there was sufficient evidence," said Gibson.

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The evidence is there to prove Delay was involved in wrongdoing and also prove that he and his fellow grand jurors acted independent of political influence, Gibson said.

"It wasn't Mr. Earle that indicted the man. It was the 12 members of the grand jury," Gibson said.

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