The Fletcher Inquisition: Has the smoking gun been discovered?

For months we have been asserting that the grand jury which issued indictments against former Gov. Ernie Fletcher and members of his administration (and even private citizens who supported Fletcher) was fatally flawed and compromised, if not outright corrupt. We pointed out the personal motivations of the chief whistleblower, Doug Doerting, in making the original complaint; the obvious political motives of Attorney General Greg Stumbo; the political loyalties of the chief prosecutor (Scott Crawford-Sutherland) to Fletcher's vanquished opponent in the 2003 governor's race; the political hostility inherent in a majority of the grand jurors; the financial conflict of interest posed by having state merit employees (including the grand jury's forewoman) on the panel because they were negatively financially impacted by the administration's increment policy; and testimony given by several parties (including Doerting) in various legal proceedings that the administration's intent was to follow and bolster the law, not break it, in the interests of providing better services to the taxpayers of Kentucky.

Each time we brought these things up, we were accused of impugning the integrity of the judicial process and that of 12 courageous Franklin County residents who were forced to take time out of their lives to pull grand jury duty. In fact, anyone who made these arguments in public forums, such as other blogs, became the subject of attacks.

Well, have we finally found proof positive that the grand jury was tainted and flawed?

An anonymous poster with access to Lexis-Nexis or some other source of information has provided a definite physical link between attorney general's office employee (and member of Stumbo's former Kentucky Bureau of Investigation) John Dudinskie and grand juror Tuyen Dudinskie. The two live at the same address, 105 Kensington Lane, in Frankfort.

How was a member of the household of a KBI employee ever allowed to serve on a special grand jury hearing evidence gathered by the KBI? Those who claimed we were questioning the very fabric of our judicial system ought to be outraged -- not at us (don't shoot the messenger) but at the very blatant ethical and legal conflicts posed here.

The Frankfort establishment and its willing accomplices in the press got what they wanted: Ernie Fletcher out of power, and a Democrat back at the helm of the state. But at what cost?

We'd like to know what other ties may have existed between grand jurors and interested parties in this case, but the judge sealed the juror information sheets filled out by the prospective jurors when they were called for jury duty. So the only way to discover this is to take the list of grand jurors, which is a matter of public record and is available from the Franklin Circuit Clerk's office, and do some investigation the way we and an observant reader did.

The fix was in -- and we may have stumbled upon a smoking gun to prove it.

Yes, Ernie Fletcher is out of politics, probably for good, but we will never forget the injustice done to him, nor will we forgive those who perpetrated it upon him. The process that ended his career and gave Frankfort back to the incompetent and inept Democrats to do things the way they've always done them, with the same old people running things, was a travesty of justice.

If any of our readers knows anything about any of the grand jurors, and can offer some proof, e-mail us at ky_pac2@yahoo.com or post it here. We're mainly looking for information relating to conflicts of interest between the grand juror's job, family connections, friendships, etc., and their grand jury service, although juicy personal stuff might be useful sometime in the future if it becomes necessary for more pressure to be brought to bear to get a full investigation of what went on. It's time for an accounting to be made.