BEVERLY HILLS, October 06, (THEWILL) – A former United States congressman, William Jefferson, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for brokering business deals in Nigeria, has been ordered to be immediately released from jail to receive a new sentencing hearing.
THEWILL recalls that Jefferson, 70, was famously caught hiding $90,000 cash from the bribe in his freezer following a 2005 raid of his Washington home that turned up cash stuffed in frozen food boxes and made him fodder for late-night comedians.
Jefferson, a Democrat, who represented parts of New Orleans, has been serving his sentence since 2012.
The ruling on his release followed a Supreme Court’s decision last year making it more difficult to convict public officials on bribery-related offences.
In a ruling made public on Thursday, U.S. Senior Judge, T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, said a new sentencing hearing is necessary because the Supreme Court has subsequently changed what constitutes “an official act” for which a public official can be convicted of bribery.
Ellis vacated seven of the 10 counts on which Jefferson was convicted while on two of the remaining counts, Jefferson received a five-year sentence, and on the third, he received a 13-year sentence.
But Ellis said there is no guarantee that Jefferson would again receive a 13-year sentence on that count, so he ordered a new sentencing hearing for December 1.
In his 41-page ruling, Ellis wrote, “No one reading this opinion should conclude that Jefferson was innocent of crime; he was not innocent of crime.”
