Kent and I wrote a number of times about the "compassionate release" of the Lockerbie bomber/mass murderer,  Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, by Scotish authorities.  Al-Megrahi had only a few weeks to live, so we were told.  As Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill huffed in the characteristically superior style of European Higher Wisdom, "Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available. Our beliefs dictate that justice be served but mercy be shown."

This sounded like a bunch of baloney at the time, and I said so.

I must now confess error.  It was not so much baloney as a pack of outright lies, compounded, we now find out, by international blackmail and big-time payoffs.  The whole astoundingly corrupt story is covered in this Powerline entry.  Its first two paragraphs read:

The most interesting news story of the morning comes from Libya, where it is claimed that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, secured his release by blackmailing Muammar Qadaffi, who in turn bribed England's Labour government to let him go:

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi allegedly threatened "revenge" on Col Gaddafi unless he was returned home to his family, prompting the dictator to spend £50,000-a-month on lobbying and legal fees in a campaign to secure the terrorist's release.

Most of the criminal defense bar's nonstop yammering about "compassion" is nowhere near as reprehensible as the Lockerbie release story; it's merely the last gasp of the guilty trying a shopworn courtroom stunt.  Still, the Lockerbie tale is worth remembering the next time defense counsel starts in on you for being short on "compassion."

P.S.   Al-Megrahi, the man about to kick the bucket when released, now lives as a celebrity in Libya, a year and a half after being freed.