Editorial: Emphatic guilty verdicts

Saturday, May 6, 2006 | 7:45 a.m.

In the end, federal prosecutors were able to convince a jury on nearly all counts that former Clark County Commissioners Dario Herrera and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey were guilty in a political corruption trial. The evidence against them included wiretapped conversations and the testimony of former County Commissioner Erin Kenny and strip club owner Michael Galardi, both of whom entered guilty pleas to gain more lenient sentences.

The conventional wisdom during the trial was that the youthful Herrera had a tougher hill to climb because he wasn't a sympathetic figure. Galardi testified that Herrera not only had received bribes in the form of cash but that he had also received sexual favors from Galardi's employees - including oral sex during a golf outing. In contrast, Kincaid-Chauncey has long been seen as a grandmotherly figure in political circles, someone who was trustworthy.

But as is clear by the verdicts handed down on Friday, jurors carefully sorted through the evidence and rendered a judgment based on the facts presented to them. What is interesting is that the prosecution's top witnesses - Galardi and Kenny - had serious credibility issues. Galardi himself had made unfounded, wild accusations about other politicians, but ultimately the jury determined that the government's case was strong enough to convict Herrera and Kincaid-Chauncey.

Sentencing for Herrera and Kincaid-Chauncey is set for Aug. 21, but the impact from the trial's outcome will extend far beyond the government's case. Public cynicism about politicians, already at a high level, almost certainly is bound to get worse because of these convictions. In a way, that is one of the great tragedies of this case, that the public will believe that almost all politicians are on the take. That obviously isn't the case, but the guilty verdicts do nothing to dampen such a belief.

We hope that the convictions will serve as a warning to other elected officials about what can happen to them, too, if they betray the public trust. It also should be remembered that the convictions demonstrate that no one - including a member of arguably the most powerful government board in the state - is above the law.