( CNN ) -- Does John Edwards deserve to go to prison ? The jury has decided , and he 's walking . Whatever we may think of the Edwards trial , one thing is certain : the prosecution was a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money on a non-crime . Who cares if a billionaire wants to give a multimillionaire some money to hide his mistress ( who pays taxes on the gift ) ? The prosecution of Edwards was never so much about Edwards as it was about George Holding . Wait -- who is George Holding ? And why should we care ? After winning a recent primary , Holding is likely the next congressman in the 13th District of North Carolina . He initiated the prosecution against Edwards while he was a U.S. Attorney . But he did n't argue the case in court . Instead , after receiving a year 's worth of headlines ( and Republican praise ) for charging Edwards , Holding resigned from the case to run for Congress . Maybe Holding understood the weakness of the case , which rested upon Edwards ' failure to report the money billionaire heiress Bunny Mellon and another wealthy donor gave to him to help hide his mistress . The problem is that if Edwards had reported contributions and then used them for personal expenses , he would have been guilty of a crime , since the Federal Election Commission bars spending official campaign funds on personal expenses . Therefore , according to Holding , Edwards was damned if he did , and damned if he did n't . To prove his case , Holding had to show that Edwards knowingly broke the law . But if neglecting to report the gifts as campaign contributions constituted a crime , yet reporting such gifts as contributions would violate existing law ( by implying that Edwards converted contributions to personal use ) , then it is impossible to prove Edwards knew he was breaking the law , which would be necessary for a conviction . That 's not very good legal reasoning on which to rest a case -- especially a case unlike any other that had been successfully tried . And since Holding had access to all the available evidence and knew that no witness and no recordings would suggest that Edwards knew he was breaking the law , it is difficult to see how Holding thought he might win , other than hoping that jurors disliked Edwards so much they would convict him . Or maybe Holding was n't all that concerned with the legal reasoning . Perhaps he realized that , win or lose , he 'd already gotten enough mileage from the case to realize his political ambitions . By the time he indicted Edwards , the well-connected Holding knew that the newly Republican state legislature had drawn a safe district he could win , if only he could get out of the primary . And what better way to appeal to Republican diehards than prosecuting the smarmy , liberal trial lawyer John Edwards ? Holding certainly received his reward last month when he won his congressional primary . The public generally associates politicians with the pursuit of ambition and power . Too often , investigators act from similar motives . Law enforcement officials seek to justify long , expensive investigations into high-profile targets by stretching the law to win convictions and mount the biggest scalps on their walls . The former head of the St. Louis FBI who investigated me for a campaign finance violation years ago said of his job : `` I love the chase . [ It ] was fantastic . It was me against them . And the smarter they were , the richer they were , the more I enjoyed catching them . '' But justice is n't about investigators ' adrenaline rushes or personal advancement . It 's about the common good . If the central goal of prosecuting `` corrupt '' public figures is to remove them from public life , then the Edwards prosecution is a clear case of overkill . He is a walking punch line , unfit to run for dog catcher . Why should prosecutors spend millions of dollars and years of time targeting him with novel legal theories ? I am familiar with Edwards ' predicament . During my 2004 congressional campaign in Missouri , I approved a meeting between two aides and a man who wanted to send out a postcard highlighting my opponent 's dismal attendance record in the state House . In the immediate aftermath , our campaign denied any involvement in the mailing , and then when faced with a Federal Election Commission complaint which gave us a chance to come clean , we maintained our denial . Five years later , through an unlikely set of circumstances culminating in my best friend 's wiretap , I ended up in prison for a year . As a current taxpayer who spent a year loading trucks at a prison warehouse , eating food for which you , dear reader , paid , I can tell you two things . First , I did not want to pay to house , feed and clothe multimillionaire lawyer John Edwards . Second , the only person in this sordid mess whom prosecutors should have considered indicting is someone who was already granted immunity . That 's right , Andrew Young , who defrauded the 99-year-old Bunny Mellon by siphoning ( or , more precisely , stealing ) hundreds of thousands of dollars to build his dream house . Of course , prosecuting Young would n't have gotten George Holding all the publicity that prosecuting John Edwards did , and it definitely would n't have gotten him to Congress . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeff Smith .
Jeff Smith : John Edwards conviction was a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money on a non - citizen . Smith : Defense of Edwards was really about George Young , who should be in Congress . He says Holding indicted Edwards for political gains and attention . Smith : The person in this sordid mess who ought to be indicted is Andrew Young .