Former Gov. Don Siegelman will be staying in prison on public corruption charges. And he won’t be seeing his sentence reduced either.
That is what a federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled Wednesday sinking Siegelman’s hopes for a new trial or at least some time shaved off the remaining two years of his original six and a half year sentence.
When I heard the news my first reaction was a yawn. I think I’m like a lot of you. I was done with the Siegelman thing a long time ago. It’s still hard for me to get my head around the fact that this case is now into its second decade.
I remember the June 2006 day when a Montgomery federal jury found Siegelman guilty of bribery, conspiracy and fraud charges. Almost a year later to the date I was sitting in that same Montgomery courtroom as Judge Mark Fuller handed down the sentence – 88 months – whispered into my cell phone to my editor back in Birmingham who was having trouble hearing me. I whispered out of concern that any minute a federal marshal was going to come over and yank me up for using the phone.