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Interviews with numerous legal experts suggest that Colorado US Attorney Troy Eid misled reporters and diverged from state law when declining to prosecute any of the three men arrested in Denver for threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Eid,
who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, declined to prosecute the three men on charges of threatening to assassinate Barack Obama during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, saying that the suspects were
"just a bunch of meth heads" and their words failed to meet the legal standard for "true threat."
"It's very unusual," says Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School professor who also writes for Harper's Magazine.
"Basically, you have a US Attorney trotting out the sort of arguments that defense counsel makes on a plea for reduced sentencing."