Michael Maggio, the former Faulkner County circuit judge imprisoned for accepting a bribe, was released from prison last week after serving less than half of his 10-year sentence, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate database.
His attorneys could not be reached for comment Saturday. James Hensley, a Conway attorney who represented Maggio for a time, said he is "not involved right now."
Maggio was released Wednesday, the database shows.
In July 2013, Maggio lowered a jury verdict against Michael Morton of Fort Smith, the owner of Greenbrier Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, from $5.2 million to $1 million, in a wrongful-death case.
Two days earlier, Morton wrote or had an employee write 10 $3,000 checks to political action committees that were primarily helping Maggio's campaign as Maggio sought a seat on the state Court of Appeals.
The checks arrived via FedEx at the home of Gilbert Baker, a former state senator from Conway and Maggio's friend and political ally, the day before Maggio's ruling. Maggio's campaign received a portion of the funds, according to a 2019 federal indictment.
Maggio, 60, pleaded guilty in January 2015 to the bribery charge. He was sentenced to prison in 2018 but reportedly had his sentence reduced. He was held in a federal prison in Atlanta.
The only orders entered in his case since January 2019 have been sealed by U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, who heard the case against Maggio.
Baker, accused of being the middleman between Morton and Maggio, pleaded innocent to conspiracy to bribe a judge and was acquitted of that charge on Aug. 12. However, the jury was unable to reach a decision on charges of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and seven counts of honest services wire fraud.
Baker will face a retrial in May of 2022 on those eight counts, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ordered in September.
The family of 76-year-old Martha Bull of Perryville filed a wrongful-death suit against Greenbrier Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a suit in which Morton was the defendant and Maggio was the judge.
Bull died in 2008, about two weeks after being admitted for an expected month-long rehabilitation for a mild stroke and an abdominal illness. The family said a doctor was never summoned, despite Bull's tears over pain and nausea, her cold and clammy skin, and blood in her stool.
Morton has not been charged in the bribery case. He has said he meant to donate to Maggio's judicial campaign but did not intend to influence the outcome of the wrongful-death lawsuit.
He has called the timing of the checks written July 8, 2013, the same day his lawyers asked Maggio to void or reduce the jury award to Bull's family, "coincidental."
The 10 checks, sent to Baker's home, also included two $25,000 checks to a nonprofit trade association, $100,000 to the University of Central Arkansas and $48,000 to Rhonda Wood, a circuit judge at the time and now an associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Wood testified in Baker's trial, an unusual matter for a sitting Supreme Court justice, and told jurors that neither Baker nor Maggio, with whom she served as a circuit judge, had ever discussed the nursing home case with her.
She announced in September that she is seeking a second term on the high court.