Conway attorney James Hensley Jr. will represent Michael Maggio in appealing the ousted judge's 10-year prison sentence for federal bribery.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has appointed Hensley under the Criminal Justice Act, which provides funding for the representation of defendants with limited financial resources in federal criminal proceedings.
Maggio, a former judge for Arkansas' 20th Judicial Circuit, had retained Hensley shortly before Maggio unsuccessfully sought to withdraw his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Little Rock and then sought, also unsuccessfully, to receive a lenient sentence.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller granted Maggio's request to be declared a pauper for purposes of appeal.
It is not uncommon for an attorney already representing a client in federal court to be appointed counsel in pauper cases.
Maggio, 54, was making roughly $140,000 a year when the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered him removed from office in September 2014, in part over online comments Maggio made about women, divorce, race, bestiality and a legally confidential adoption case involving actress Charlize Theron.
Months later, on Jan. 9, 2015, Maggio pleaded guilty to bribery and admitted accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for lowering a Faulkner County jury's $5.2 million judgment against a nursing home to $1 million.
In a sworn statement seeking pauper status, Maggio said his assets include a house valued at $325,000 and a car worth $1,000. He indicated that his wife, Dawn, pays $2,100 per month on the house and said that includes real-estate taxes and property insurance. He said his average monthly employment income has been $100 during the past 12 months and that his wife's was $3,100. She expects to make the same next month, but he expects to make nothing, he wrote.
The appeals court said a brief outlining Maggio's appeal would be due May 5.
In sentencing Maggio last month, Miller ordered him to report to prison May 23. Miller agreed to recommend that Maggio serve his sentence in the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas. The decision is up to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The 10-year prison sentence is the maximum the law allows for Maggio's crime, but it is above the federal guideline range of 51 to 63 months in Maggio's case. Under Maggio's plea agreement, he can appeal the sentence because it is above the guideline range established at sentencing.
Miller did not order Maggio to pay any restitution despite prosecutors' request that he be ordered to pay $4.2 million to the family of Martha Bull, the Perryville woman whose death in a Greenbrier nursing home in 2008 led to the negligence-lawsuit judgment that Maggio lowered.
Bull's family has since sued nursing-home owner Michael Morton and former state Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, alleging they conspired to funnel donations to Maggio's campaign for the Arkansas Court of Appeals in exchange for the reduced judgment. The conspiracy lawsuit is pending in Faulkner County Circuit Court.
Baker and Morton have denied wrongdoing and have not been charged with a crime.
State Desk on 04/05/2016