Kaine continues to reel from the death penalty ads, now arguing that while his name was on the court documents defending the man who killed Stanley Rosenbluth’s son, Kaine himself didn’t bill a single hour to the case. This morning’s FLS has more:
Kaine was careful not to accuse Rosenbluth of lying, saying that the man might not have known he wasn’t really Sheppard’s lawyer, since Kaine’s name did appear on court documents.
‘I understand and sympathize and feel horrible about his grief and the loss of his son,’ Kaine said. ‘[But] that statement and that representation in the ad is frankly false. And without that fact, the whole ad really sort of falls apart.’
But he pulled no punches in criticizing Kilgore for what he said were lies and the inappropriate use of a grieving father.
‘Time and again in this campaign, Jerry Kilgore has been called out by the press and others for an egregious misrepresentation of facts,’ Kaine said. ‘The claim that Jerry Kilgore is carrying in this ad is the most egregious and prejudicial kind of statement by a desperate candidate. It’s far below the standard that somebody should try to meet if they want to be governor of 7 million Virginians.’
Darned straight he was careful not to accuse Rosenbluth of lying. Why? Because while in the FLS article Kaine argues he spent a mere 48 mintues on the case, the first statements from the Kaine campaign seem to be a bit misleadiing.
From the FLS article this morning (10.14.05):
“I never met Mark Sheppard. I didn’t know Mark Sheppard. I never visited him, I never spoke with him,” Kaine said. “I spent 48 minutes advising [Finberg] during the course of two years he spent on this case. It is completely wrong to suggest that it was Tim Kaine that was voluntarily representing Mark Sheppard.”
To the RTD article two days ago (10.12.05):
The Kaine campaign said Kaine’s law firm, Mezzulo & McCandlish, was appointed by the court to represent Sheppard in an appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A Kaine spokesman said a young lawyer with the firm was the lead attorney and Kaine helped him. They argued that Sheppard’s right to equal protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution had been violated.
That leaves more questions than answers. Did Kaine help Sheppard or did he not? Was he not involved in the case as Kaine now claims, or did he help craft the argument that Sheppard’s constitutional rights had been violated? Furthermore, if Kaine’s personal convictions are so firmly rooted, what precisely did they lead him to do here? Did his convictions sway him to represent Sheppard? Or did they momentarily vacillate, and for what reasons?
More critically, what can we expect from Tim Kaine as governor on other issues of import?
No word on Kelly Timbrook’s testimony from the Kaine campaign. Timbrook’s husband, as the second ad goes, was a police officer shot and killed in their Winchester home back in 1999.