A former Republican state senator and member of a powerful Arkansas political family was sentenced Friday to 46 months in federal prison for bribery and filing a false tax return in a scheme that the judge said was "not a case of someone who is just bad with numbers," but the result of deliberate choices made by the defendant.
The sentence handed Friday to Jeremy Hutchinson, 48, the son of former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson and nephew of former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, is a full two years below the low-end guideline range of 70 to 87 months that was calculated from federal sentencing guidelines.
In addition, U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker ordered Hutchinson to pay $355,535.10 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. Baker ordered Hutchinson to self-report to his designated Bureau of Prisons facility on March 3.
The U.S. attorney's office had asked Baker to sentence Hutchinson to 6½ years in prison while Timothy Dudley, Hutchinson's attorney, was seeking a sentence of one year and one day.
Hutchinson pleaded guilty to the charges -- which were contained in two separate indictments across two separate federal districts before being merged into a single case -- on June 25, 2019, in Baker's court.
The next month, in the Western District of Missouri, Hutchinson pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud a federally funded charity, for which he faces a maximum sentence of five years. Sentencing in that case has not yet been set.
In arguing for a lower sentence on Friday, Dudley pointed to punishments that had been handed out to others named in the same indictments as Hutchinson.
But, as she prepared to announce the sentence, Baker said Hutchinson's offenses appeared to be part of a pattern that indicated his behavior was not aberrant.
"This is not a case of someone who is just bad with numbers or bad with money or doesn't keep up with receipts or doesn't understand accounting," Baker said.
"What sets you apart from some other defendants Mr. Dudley brought up to me is that you have engaged in conduct that's resulted in indictments in three jurisdictions. ... This isn't aberrant behavior. ... This isn't a one-time thing that you stumbled into and that you're sorry for. You may be sorry but it wasn't a one-time deal. ... That sets you apart from these other folks."
Hutchinson was implicated in a widespread fraud investigation involving a Missouri-based nonprofit, Preferred Family Healthcare, which at one time was the largest Medicaid-funded provider of counseling in Arkansas, with 47 locations statewide.
The state yanked the nonprofit's licenses to operate in Arkansas on June 29, 2018, after the federal investigation exposed the breadth of the scandal, and last year the organization agreed to pay $8 million in restitution to Arkansas and to the federal government.
Hutchinson was one of a number of state lawmakers ensnared in illegal dealings with the nonprofit's executives. The other lawmakers include Republicans Jon Woods and Micah Neal, both of Springdale, and Democrats Hank Wilkins IV of Pine Bluff and Eddie Wayne Cooper of Melbourne.
Woods was convicted May 3, 2018, of 15 counts of public corruption and is currently serving 18 years in federal prison. According to the Bureau of Prisons, Woods is scheduled for release in mid-2033. Neal pleaded guilty in January 2017 for his role in the same scheme, and he testified against Woods. Neal was sentenced in September 2018 to three years of probation with one year to be served under house arrest. Wilkins was sentenced last month to a year and a day in prison and ordered to pay $123,000 in restitution.
No sentencing date has been set for Cooper, whose legal proceedings were handled by a federal judge in the Western District of Missouri.
Hutchinson's sentencing date had been postponed a number of times as he waited to testify in the federal trial in Missouri of two Preferred Family Healthcare executives, Tommy Ray Goss, the former chief financial officer, and Goss' wife, Bontiea Bernedette Goss, the former chief operating officer. The two were scheduled to go to trial Oct. 3, but the trial was canceled less than a week before it was to begin when both Gosses pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy counts.
The former legislator admitted to filing a false income tax return in 2012 that under-reported his income in the 2011 tax year and to making additional false statements on subsequent tax returns through 2014.
Hutchinson also admitted to conspiring from 2014-17 to commit bribery with Benjamin Burris of Fort Smith, who was the co-owner of orthodontic clinics in Arkansas. Hutchinson admitted to accepting more than $157,000 from Burris over a period of nearly three years beginning in February of 2014. Hutchinson admitted that the payments, disguised as legal fees, were paid for him to further legislation favorable to the Burris' businesses.
Dudley argued that Hutchinson should be sentenced well below the guideline range of 70 to 87 months, pointing out that several of those sentenced for similar behavior in the conspiracy, including Wilkins, had received sentences of one year and one day in prison. He said Wilkins was indicted for similar conduct and, like Hutchinson, had no prior criminal record and cooperated with investigators.
"He got a year and a day," Dudley said. "The government tried to say the Wilkins case is not similar because of Mr. Wilkins' health and age, but that's not what they said at sentencing. At sentencing they wanted five years."
Dudley said the longest sentence any cooperating co-defendant had received was 12 months and one day in prison, and the longest sentence of any co-defendant who entered a plea but did not cooperate with prosecutors was 36 months.
"I don't see how you could say a 78-month sentence would not be a disparate sentence," Dudley said.
In the four years since Hutchinson was indicted, Dudley said, he has surrendered his law license and was unable to find steady employment, which Dudley said had forced Hutchinson to work at odd jobs such as landscaping work or driving for Uber.
"He's done any menial job he could find to try to make money," the lawyer said. "He's been in limbo and he's been unable to get on with his life for nearly four years."
Dudley scoffed at the government's contention that a 78-month sentence would serve as a deterrent to others. He said for offenders like Hutchinson, the public humiliation of being investigated, indicted and prosecuted is a greater deterrent than any of the sentences being discussed.
"If going to prison was, for a politician, a real deterrent, then politicians would have quit breaking the law a long time ago," Dudley said.
"If you're thinking about committing a crime and you're a politician, do you say, 'Well, if I get caught and I'm only going to get a year so I might as well go on and do it but if I get seven years I can't do that?'" he added.
Dudley pointed out letters that had been written in Hutchinson's support, noting that they had come from politicians in both parties, family members, and acquaintances he had assisted over the years. He said the letters helped tell a story "of a good man who made a bad mistake." He noted that at least one letter, from Hutchinson's ex-wife, had not painted a positive picture, but said, "It's a bad family situation that stems from divorce."
Marco Palmieri, an attorney with the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, pushed back on Dudley's portrayal of his client.
"This comes down to choices and accountability, Mr. Hutchinson's choices," Palmieri said. "He chose to sell his vote. He chose to get up on the stand and lie to save his own skin. He chose to engage in conduct, criminal conduct, in three separate federal districts."
After the hearing, Jonathan Ross, U.S. attorney for Arkansas' Eastern District, said that he was satisfied with the sentence, even though it was lower than what the government had asked for.
"When public servants enter office, they take an oath to faithfully discharge the duties of their office," Ross said. "If they do the opposite by taking bribes, kickbacks, or gratuities in exchange for their duties, our office, along with the FBI and the IRS, will investigate and if warranted, prosecute those crimes no matter how long it takes."