AP News, June 8th, 2007
Attorneys for former Mayor Bill Campbell argued on Friday that his prison sentence for tax evasion was unfairly tinged by unproven public corruption charges.
Challenging the conviction and sentence at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the defense team also said Campbell did not have his chosen lawyer during his federal trial last year.
Campbell, who was convicted in March 2006, has served 10 months of a 30-month sentence. During the same trial, the jury acquitted him of bribery and racketeering charges stemming from accusations that he got payoffs from city contractors while leading Atlanta during the 1990s.
Defense lawyer Doug Berman said District Judge Richard W. Story nevertheless factored corruption into Campbell's sentence.
"It's one thing for a defendant to be advised that they may get a harsher punishment if they go to trial and lose," Berman told the three-judge appeals panel. "It's another to say that if you go to trial and win, you may get a harsher punishment."
Federal prosecutors countered that Campbell's sentence was more than reasonable.
"The defendant has a propensity to engage in acts of deception," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sally Yates. "This is not an everyday tax cheat. He was the mayor of Atlanta."
Campbell was not present for the hearing. He is serving his sentence at the Miami Federal Correctional Institution.
The defense also challenged Friday whether Campbell's one-time attorney, Craig Gillen, should have been removed from the case. A judge disqualified Gillen, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, because his law partner had represented one of the government's witnesses in the case, George Greene.
Yates supported the judge's decision, saying, "Mr. Greene was not just any old witness in this case. He was an accuser."
