WASHINGTON — The United States Supreme Court has denied to review the appeal of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who is currently serving a 78-month (six-and-a-half years) federal prison sentence after being convicted in a federal public corruption trial.
In 2005, Siegelman was indicted on corruption charges alleging he had accepted campaign contributions in return for political favors. A year later, a federal jury found Siegelman guilty on seven counts, including bribery, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud and obstruction of justice.
The disgraced governor was released from prison in 2008 while he appealed his conviction, claiming that he had been convicted unjustly. In 2009, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the charges against him and refused to grant him a new trial.
In 2014, Mashable named the Siegelman bribery scandal the worst ever by an American governor.
Here’s what the site had to say about Siegelman at the time:
Siegelman was convicted of taking bribes in return for campaign donations and is currently around two years into a 6.5 year prison term. He seems hopeful that he will be exonerated at some point by the Supreme Court or President Barack Obama for what he feels was an unfair conviction orchestrated by a politically biased Department of Justice under former President George W. Bush.
Siegelman has continued to maintain that the charges against him and his conviction were politically motived attacks by Republican operatives. The 11th U.S. Circuit in May of last year again ruled there was no evidence supporting those claims and saw no reason to grant a new trial. Today, the Supreme Court put his hopes of exoneration to rest.
Siegelman is scheduled to get out of prison in 2017.
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