Former Circuit Judge Michael Maggio will remain free pending the appeal of his federal bribery conviction.
Judge Brian Miller, ruling in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, granted Maggio's motion Friday, a day after the U.S. attorney's office filed a document opposing Maggio's release.
Maggio, 54, was scheduled to begin serving a 10-year prison sentence May 23. Miller had sentenced Maggio last month after refusing to let the ousted judge withdraw a guilty plea made more than a year earlier, in January 2015. The 10-year sentence is the maximum prison time allowed under the federal bribery statute under which Maggio was convicted.
In a two-page ruling, Miller wrote, "Nothing indicates that Maggio will flee or poses a danger to the safety of the community, so the issues are whether the question that will be presented by Maggio on appeal is substantial and whether a reversal [of the conviction] will occur if the [8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals] rules in his favor."
Maggio's attorney, James Hensley Jr., has indicated that he plans to challenge the legality of applying the federal bribery statute to Maggio's case.
Miller wrote in his decision Friday that he was "persuaded that [the statute] applies to Maggio's actions just as it applied to" a sheriff's deputy in another case in the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit.
"Unfortunately, there is no case law applying the statute to a judge who took a bribe under circumstances similar to those at issue herein," Miller wrote.
"Further, if the Eighth Circuit rules in Maggio's favor, and holds that the statute does not apply to state judges acting similarly to Maggio, a reversal is almost certain to occur," Miller added.
Miller ruled that Maggio could remain free pending appeal.
In his plea agreement, Maggio admitted he had lowered a Faulkner County jury's $5.2 million judgment to $1 million in July 2013 in exchange for contributions to his since-halted campaign for the Arkansas Court of Appeals. The decision came in a negligence lawsuit filed by the family of Martha Bull, a Perryville woman who died in 2008 in a Greenbrier nursing home owned by Michael Morton of Fort Smith.
Bull's family has since sued Morton and former state Sen. Gilbert Baker, a Republican lobbyist and fundraiser, and accused them of conspiring to funnel contributions to Maggio's campaign to get the judgment lowered.
Neither Baker nor Morton has been charged with a crime, and both have denied wrongdoing.
Maggio was a judge in the 20th Judicial Circuit -- which includes Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties -- when the negligence lawsuit came before him.
In September 2014, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered Maggio removed from office over unrelated issues, including comments he made online about divorce, bestiality, race and a legally confidential adoption case involving actress Charlize Theron. Maggio has since surrendered his law license.
State Desk on 04/23/2016