The great unmentionable in the Cyril Wecht case

As many of you know, America's most famous forensic pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, was charged with a number of crimes, including wire fraud, mail fraud and theft from an organization receiving federal funds.

Among his "heinous" crimes, he was accused of having an autopsy tech prepare tissue slides for private cases on public time, and of using a county car to visit private clients. In essence, he stood accused of not keeping his private business sufficiently separated from his county duties, and of charging private clients for county-provided transportation.

A jury recently deadlocked on the case -- and the comments of some folks on the jury tie the case to the ongoing U.S. Attorney scandal.

Defense attorneys have claimed that politics is at the heart of Republican U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan's prosecution of Dr. Wecht, a Democrat.

The jury foreman said he went into the trial with an open mind.

"But as the case went on my thoughts were this was being politically driven," he said.

The Rev. Stanley F. Albright, who left the jury during deliberations for health reasons, had some interesting things to say:

"His main scheme was to defraud and, my goodness, I didn't see that anywhere. I kept looking for this big criminal scheme. I couldn't find it. It never surfaced for me, as far as I'm concerned..."

This is quite telling:

"I guess what bothered me was the FBI went and informed his private clients, 'Look what Dr. Wecht is doing to you,'" the foreman said. "I can understand if they didn't know that ahead of time, OK, fine. But once they were notified, not one of them came forward and said, 'You know something, the government is right, Dr. Wecht cheated me, he robbed me, I would like to file charges, I want my money back, I want something done.'"

Why did the FBI commit so many resources to a case in which no-one felt wronged?

The great unmentionable in the case is, of course, the JFK assassination. For decades, Wecht has offered expert testimony against the single bullet theory. (His Wikipedia page offers a surprisingly one-sided summary of the controversy, incidentally.)