"Crushing Defeat" for New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has used the threat of prosecution to force firms and people to do what he wanted. While it was personally financially costly, someone finally decided to fight back and, as the article says, crushed Spitzer:

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer may just have discovered that his favorite weapon against corporate fraud has lost its razor-sharp edge.

Spitzer, who has presented himself as a corporate reform crusader as he prepares to run for governor next year, got hit with a crushing defeat in a Manhattan state court today. A jury exonerated former Bank of America broker Theodore Sihpol on 29 counts of larceny and securities fraud. He had been accused of helping a hedge fund do improper late trades in the bank's Nations Funds.