What was the key to Camp's softball treatment? Federal prosecutors allowed him to get away without pleading guilty to a gun-possession charge. At least one Atlanta lawyer, Bruce Harvey, had the guts to stand up and criticize the plea deal:
Harvey criticized the plea deal reached between Camp's legal team and the U.S. Justice Department's public integrity section. He questioned, for example, why prosecutors did not require Camp to plead guilty to a gun possession charge, which would have exposed him to a more severe sentence.
"Once again," he said, "it's the little people who get caught in the gears of the system, and those who run the system reap all the benefits."
Here's another sign that it helps to be a federal judge: Camp is allowed to remain free on $50,000 bond. Several victims of Bush-era political prosecutions, including former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and codefendant Richard Scrushy--were "convicted" for actions that are not even crimes and were immediately taken into custody, in shackles.
Sherry Ann Ramos is the stripper/informant who helped bring down Judge Camp. The Smoking Gun (TSG) calls Ramos "Atlanta's Most Notorious Stripper." Reports TSG:
The Atlanta stripper who worked with the FBI to snare a federal judge on drug and gun charges is a convicted felon who spent three years in prison for her role in a methamphetamine distribution operation, The Smoking Gun has learned.
If you had a case before a federal judge, wouldn't you love to know he was hanging out with Sherry Ann Ramos after hours? And it gets worse. Writes TSG:
Ramos was originally indicted in January 2005 on a narcotics distribution charge, but later cut a plea deal to a lesser count of using a phone to arrange the sale of more than 50 grams of methamphetamine. In describing the unnamed stripper/informant used in the Camp probe, FBI agents noted that the snitch's rap sheet included a "federal felony conviction for use of a telephone in connection with a drug trafficking crime."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).