8th Circuit panel hears sides as former Arkansas judge tries to undo plea

Ousted Faulkner County Circuit Judge Michael Maggio is shown in this 2016 file photo.
Ousted Faulkner County Circuit Judge Michael Maggio is shown in this 2016 file photo.

As Michael Maggio sat in a St. Louis courtroom, his attorney acknowledged the difficulties in defending a former judge who now says he was "strong-armed" into pleading guilty to a federal bribery charge.

ADVERTISEMENT

More headlines

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard about 30 minutes of arguments Wednesday from defense attorney John Wesley Hall and Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters. The panel took the case under advisement.

By the time Peters began her arguments for the prosecution, the judges had hit Hall with so many questions that she began by saying, "The defendant has already admitted some of the most important parts of this case."

The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered Maggio, 55, removed from the bench in September 2014 over an unrelated matter -- online postings he had made about topics including women, sex, bestiality and divorce. Then, in January 2015, Maggio pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Little Rock to bribery.

In his plea agreement, Maggio admitted taking thousands of dollars in campaign donations from political action committees financed largely by businessman Michael Morton in exchange for lowering a Faulkner County jury's $5.2 million judgment to $1 million in July 2013. The verdict came in a negligence lawsuit against Morton's Greenbrier nursing home over the 2008 death of resident Martha Bull, 76.

As Maggio's sentencing date approached, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea, but U.S. District Judge Brian Miller denied the request and sentenced Maggio to 10 years in prison. Maggio is free while he appeals his conviction and sentence.

At one point Wednesday, Hall broached the argument that the $5.2 million award was too large and that Maggio was within the law to lower it.

A judge asked Hall how he explained "the fact that Mr. Maggio admitted that this was a quid pro quo, that he did it for that purpose."

"That's admittedly a great difficulty on my part," Hall replied.

"Maybe the bribe was a bad investment if he would have done it [lowered the sum] anyway," a judge said.

Peters later argued that authorities don't know what Maggio "would have legally done if he had acted with pure motive because he acted with corrupt motive."

Hall said Maggio had said he "felt like he was strong-armed into the plea by his own lawyers that weren't listening to him."

"You're not challenging the voluntariness of the plea, are you?" a judge later asked Hall.

"No, because we [didn't] have a factual basis for that by the time I got into" the case, Hall replied.

Maggio has twice changed lawyers since his guilty plea.

Peters countered that Maggio wanted to change his plea after getting "cold feet" and feared a tougher sentence after he reneged on part of the plea agreement.

One judge asked Hall if it were "reasonable for us to consider the fact that this isn't a guy with a grade-school education."

"This is a sitting state court judge with a law degree and a lot of experience taking pleas himself," the federal judge added. "Does it really make any sense that that person can say, 'My lawyers forced me to say something on the record that was under oath that was not true?'"

Hall said defendants he has represented in guilty pleas are "usually just scared to death. They don't even know why they're there. They know they did something wrong, but the whole thing is just foreign to them."

Maggio is "never going to be a lawyer again; at best he could be a law clerk," Hall said. "To go from judicial officer to judicial defendant is a big leap."

A judge then remarked, "It's sad for him, and it's sad for the system, but it's the consequence of his actions."

"That's true," Hall said before adding, "He admitted to things that may not have necessarily been true. That's why we're here. That's why the motion to withdraw the plea."

Peters disputed the argument that Maggio admitted to things he had not done.

"He had experience in the judiciary, and he swore under oath in front of a federal judge that these things were true, and there's nothing in the record that suggests that they were false," she said. "He was represented by able counsel and, to the contrary, what the record shows is that he got cold feet, for reasons unknown, and decided that he did not want to go forward with the sentencing."

Peters noted that Maggio had been cooperating with the prosecution until he "failed a polygraph and then in a post-polygraph interview actually admitted to material conduct that was even more incriminating than what he had admitted to under his plea agreement. ... That's when he stopped cooperating."

Peters said the plea agreement contained an appeal waiver with limited exceptions, including Maggio's sentence.

Morton has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing as has lobbyist Gilbert Baker, who also has been under investigation but not charged in the case.

State Desk on 03/09/2017

Upcoming Events