MAGGIO: The former circuit judge in 2016 at the U.S. courthouse (File photo) Brian Chilson

Prosecutors have urged a federal judge to reject ousted Judge Michael Maggio‘s request that his bribery conviction be dismissed and blamed him for no other  convictions in the corruption scandal.

Maggio, who pleaded guilty to bribery in a scandal that engulfed a wealthy nursing-home owner and a former chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, asked a federal court earlier this month to dismiss the entire case against him so that he could try to become a lawyer again.

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At times shaming Maggio for his sometimes bizarre conduct, prosecutors on Monday wrote, “Maggio, who apparently would like to return to the practice of law (which he cannot do as a felon), now files this motion asking the Court to go back in time to dismiss the consented-to charging document and by extension the case against him.”

Maggio pleaded guilty in 2015 to a scheme in which authorities said he accepted a bribe in 2013 to lower a Faulkner County jury’s judgment awarding a $5.2 million  judgment to the family of Martha Bull, a Perryville woman who died in a Greenbrier nursing home owned by campaign financier Michael Morton. Maggio subsequently cut the judgment to $1 million.

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Prosecutors noted that “Maggio now complains that he is the only person to be found guilty of any charge arising out of this scheme.” But they quickly added that, “without Maggio this crime could never have occurred; as the judge, only Maggio had the power to alter the verdict.”

Prosecutors argued that Morton funneled the money through political action committee campaign donations with the middle man being former Republican lobbyist Gilbert Baker of Conway. Morton was never charged with a crime and denied wrongdoing. Baker was charged, but a jury acquitted him on one count and was hung on other counts. A judge later dismissed the case against Baker.

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Over the years, Maggio has wavered on whether he admits or denies he bribed anyone, at one time even unsuccessfully seeking to withdraw his guilty plea. In court, when he testified against Baker, his testimony was erratic.

“It should come as a surprise to no one that Maggio’s choices throughout time to admit-deny-admit-deny-admit the bribe impacted his credibility and the value of his testimony,” prosecutors wrote. “If Maggio believes other individuals were not held to account for this bribery scheme, he should look first in the mirror.”

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Prosecutors rejected Maggio’s argument that he couldn’t be charged under the statute he was charged with because he took no federal funds — an argument that courts have previously rejected in his case.

“Maggio’s case is over,” prosecutors insisted. “He was justly convicted, and he has received all judicial review available to him. In the words of the Eighth Circuit, affirming this Court, ‘the fact Maggio acted corruptly while performing his core duty as a judge presiding over a case — a context in which, even more than other high-level and elected officials, he assumed a mantle of impartiality and sat as a personification of “the system’ –set his crime apart and made it significantly worse.”

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Maggio was released from federal prison in October 2021, after serving less than half of his 10-year sentence.

” It is long past time for Maggio to accept that he was properly, legally, constitutionally
charged and convicted,” prosecutors wrote.

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“Finally, there is some irony in the fact that Maggio — then an experienced attorney
and former judge — argues he was mis-advised into a guilty plea, and yet wants his law
license back so that he can represent clients.”