Elliot Spitzer has finally dropped his vindictive campaign against Theodore Sihpol. Sihpol was acquitted by a jury of 29 of the 33 ludicrous counts Spitzer threw at him. A lone juror held out for conviction on four others and Spitzer, incredibly, wanted to go back to trial. This cannot be because he imagined he could get a conviction. It must have been to teach a lesson to anyone who dares plead not guilty. Finally Spitzer has backed down.
It has cost Sihpol $200,000 of his own money to get these charges to go away. This is in the form of a "fine" paid to the SEC, though neither the SEC nor Spitzer has come close to proving guilt. Perhaps if Sihpol had been as rich as his boss, Edward Stern, he could have paid $40 million into the blackmail fund, and the charges would have gone away earlier. But Elliot Spitzer has no interest in treating ordinary Americans in the way he treats the mega-rich.
