MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Ousted Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard has begun a legal fight to overturn his convictions on ethics violations by asking a judge to grant him a new trial.
Lawyers for Hubbard say prosecutors improperly expanded the purpose of the state ethics law before the jury that convicted the influential Republican.
“In every aspect of this case, the prosecution was allowed to stretch the law beyond what the Legislature wrote. It is trying to support a conviction based not on actual evidence and actual laws as written, but on prosecutors’ suspicions and on their personal sense of what the law ought to be,” Hubbard’s lawyers wrote in the motion filed Friday.
Hubbard’s lawyers also say that former state Ethics Commission director was improperly allowed to give overly broad interpretations of the law as an expert witness.
Bill Baxley, Hubbard’s lead defense lawyer, said Tuesday that the filing speaks for itself. The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.