Thomson disagreed with the commercial on that point and said Bell was in the country legally.?[Bell] was scheduled for deportation hearings,? he said. ?Now he could have been determined at some point to be deportable which would have made him illegal. But it didn?t happen. He killed Rick weeks before the hearing...?
?[Kelly Timbrook] may be saying that, because of that conviction, that would make him deportable therefore in the average person?s eyes he should have been deported. But [Bell] is entitled to due process,? Thomson said.
Similarly, case attorneys have come forward to challenge the other Kilgore ad featuring the death penalty:
Kaine was not the lead attorney for Sheppard; Dana Finberg was. Finberg was a junior attorney at Kaine?s law firm. In federal billing records for the case obtained by Leesburg Today, Kaine worked a total of 48 minutes on the case, out of a total of more than 1,000 hours...?I do think that the ads are misleading in that Tim wasn?t really actively involved in the Sheppard case at all,? Finberg said. ?I was the one who was appointed to represent Sheppard and I was the one who did the lion?s share of the work.?
Finberg agreed with the other attorneys and said he accepted the Sheppard appointment because it is an ethical and moral obligation for members of the bar to take on these difficult cases. He said it is ?a little beyond the pale? for Kilgore, a longtime attorney, to ?gut another lawyer? for doing what is morally and ethically right for the justice system.
?As lawyers, we?re all part of the justice system and the justice system doesn?t work if people aren?t willing to take on unpopular causes,? he said.
Today, Kilgore released another negative ad fighting Kaine's response to these inflamatory death penalty advertisements. Fortunately, polls show that the Virginia public just isn't buying it. Moreover, the very attorneys involved find the whole issue repulsive and the entire legal community is offended at the notion of Kilgore attacking what is viewed in the profession as a noble service.
It kind of leaves me puzzled: why on earth is the Kilgore campaign hanging on to an utterly disgraced campaign in such a hangdog way?