The Best Defense is a Horrible Offense

When I was a kid, one of my mom’s favorite sayings was, “There’s no need to make a Federal Case out of it.” Mom never met Michael Vick.

Federal investigators reportedly descended upon Vick’s Virginia dog-fighting compound (Crimes always happen at compounds, not at rural Virginia homes), looking for evidence of dog fighting. The AP reports that more than a dozen vehicles entered the compound, as they injected themselves into an investigation nearly 2 months old.

Vick has been silent about the development, but he’s found an unlikely champion in the fracas. The prosecutor who was investigating him. Per the AP, Surrey County Prosecutor Gerry Poindexter said, "What is foreign to me is the federal government getting into a dog fighting case." Keep in mind they only did this after a search warrant given to local investigators expired.

Further comments from Poindexter, again per the Associated Press: "I know it's been done, but what's driving this? Is it this boy's celebrity? Would they have done this if it wasn't Michael Vick?"

I’m not a genius, but I’m thinking it’s being driven by Poindexter’s slow-to-react “investigation.” I don’t know if they would have “done this” if Ron Mexico weren’t involved, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have if Poindexter had instructed police to execute the search warrant rather than sit there doing nothing.

Reading the comments of Gerry, it’s possible that rather than defending Vick, he’s simply trying to cover his own ass, since he didn’t want to make a federal - errr local - case out of it. That is, until he goes there.

“There's something awful going on here. I don't know if it's racial. I don't know what it is,” Poindexter concluded. Poindexter, who’d black, didn’t specify if the racist acts of the federal government were directed at Vick for fighting dogs or himself for being an incompetent prosecutor.

If I were Michael Vick, I’d be sleeping pretty well tonight. After all, it’s not that often that the prosecution in a case goes on the offensive for the defense.

(Note, I use the pic of Jack because he's a "FEDERAL AGENT!" There are more of these Jack Bauer Motivational Posters)