The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stood by its original decision and denied former Circuit Judge Michael Maggio's request to hear an appeal of his federal bribery conviction.
The denial was one of many issued without comment and means the former Faulkner County judge's case before the high court is over, said Maggio's attorney, John Wesley Hall.
Maggio, 56, began serving a 10-year prison sentence in July.
His remaining option is to file a post-conviction petition alleging ineffective counsel by his original attorneys in U.S. District Court in Little Rock. That's where Maggio pleaded guilty in January 2015 and agreed to cooperate with the U.S. attorney's office in the bribery investigation.
Federal authorities at that time also were investigating nursing-home owner Michael Morton of Fort Smith and lobbyist and former state Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway. Both men have denied wrongdoing, and neither has been charged with a crime.
Hall said Maggio has "known all along that" an ineffective-counsel petition is probably his best chance at overturning his conviction. But the former judge had to exhaust his appeals first, Hall said.
Hall had not talked with Maggio on Monday but said, "I imagine he's already been working on" the petition with the help of the federal prison's law library. Maggio has one year from Monday to file that petition in U.S. District Court, Hall said.
Whether Hall will be his attorney then is not yet known.
Hall was a court-appointed attorney designated to handle Maggio's appeals after federal Judge Brian Miller granted Maggio pauper status. That appointment expired with Monday's decision.
It's not known whether Miller will reappoint Hall or name someone else, and Hall said Monday that he did not know whether he would accept the appointment if he were chosen.
In early 2016, Maggio also alleged ineffective counsel by his now-former attorneys, Lauren Hoover and Marjorie Rogers.
Neither Hoover nor Rogers immediately returned phone and email messages Monday seeking comment.
A subsequent February 2016 filing by another former Maggio attorney, James Hensley, did not say why he was removing the ineffective counsel allegation, but it came less than a week after Miller granted "limited waiver" of the attorney-client privilege between Maggio and his former lawyers.
Hensley's filing further placed some blame on Hoover and Rogers.
"First, it was not until Maggio obtained new counsel that he fully understood and appreciated the legal issues in this case," Hensley wrote. Further, Maggio pleaded guilty only after his previous attorneys "pressured him" and after government attorneys threatened to prosecute his wife, Hensley said. Prosecutors have denied such a threat.
Hall said Monday that the original attorneys would get to waive privilege regarding some conversations they had with Maggio but "only to the degree necessary to defend themselves" against the ineffective-counsel allegation.
"And if you get a 'retrial,' that information can't be used in the retrial," Hall said in an email.
In pleading guilty to bribery, Maggio admitted he had lowered a Faulkner County jury's $5.2 million judgment in a negligence lawsuit against a nursing home to $1 million in exchange for thousands of dollars in contributions given indirectly to his 2014 campaign for the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
The Arkansas Supreme Court ordered Maggio removed from office in September 2014 over unrelated problems, including contentious online comments.
State Desk on 01/09/2018
