Posted on 12/19/2003 4:09:47 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
AUSTIN — A lawyer, adviser and friend to former state Attorney General Dan Morales was sentenced to six months in prison today for a fraud that, aided by the politician, would have enabled the attorney to cash in on the state's billion-dollar lawsuit against tobacco providers.
Marc Murr's sentencing formally closed the federal case that earlier this year put Morales behind bars for participating in the scheme to divert funds from the tobacco settlement in 1998 and for not declaring campaign funds on his tax return in 1999.
Murr, 47, months ago pleaded to one count of mail fraud as part of a deal that capped his sentence at six months — considerably less than the minimum of nearly five years in prison recommended by federal guidelines and the four years that Morales received in a separate plea agreement.
Because the sentence was significantly lighter than the guideline range, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said he thought “long and hard” about accepting the deal but eventually decided that the Justice Department's judgment was “far more educated then mine.”
The judge also fined Murr $40,000 — at least $13,000 of which, he said, was intended to repay the government for the expenses of investigating and prosecuting the case.
Prosecutors declined to discuss the plea deal's terms and referred questions to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, who could not be immediately reached for comment.
Murr's attorney Michael Ramsey called the sentence “a fair and favorable resolution.”
He said Murr got a good deal partly because the case's complexity meant that, while the defense couldn't afford to gamble on a trial, prosecutors also had less leverage at the negotiating table.
“Both sides understood they could lose this case,” Ramsey said.
Murr stayed silent during the proceeding. Outside the courtroom, he refused to discuss the case but hinted that he might talk at a later date.
“There's a lot to say,” he told reporters.
While prosecutors contend that Murr did little to no work on the tobacco litigation, his firm was initially slated to earn $260 million — a sum that shriveled to the still-considerable figure of $1 million after an arbitration panel divvied up the legal fees associated with the state case.
Murr eventually received $80,000 but returned the money before he was charged.
While Morales still contends that Murr deserved to be paid for his work on the tobacco case, both men pleaded guilty to the mail fraud charge that claimed they backdated one of Murr's contracts and sent it to the arbitration panel in 1998.
mrobbins@express-news.net
Yep.
This Democrat lawyer attempted to steal $260 Million!! and gets a $40,000 fine, which includes court costs????
were these Democrat judges?? Were they Morales' freinds??? He spent a while as the state AG!
Sure sounds, though, like he became "Dumbo Morales"... :-(
I always kinda wondered how a middle class kid from SA ended up the Atty. Gen of Texas.... strange.
He used to be a heck of a tennis player... I guess he'll get to play some tennis in prison. Got to see Danny play tennis with Roscoe Tanner and Harold Solomon.. I pretty sure he used to play for Trinity University.
Dan was a nice guy when I knew him. But he also had a barbed sense of humor. I remember him doing a mocking, deflationary and howlingly funny "cross-examination" for all us guys one Friday evening at the dorm of another student pretending to be yet another student who never let anybody forget that his uncle was Arkansas Senator David Pryor, that he had been captain of the Yale baseball team, etc., etc. And right in front of the Pryor guy. It was quite a funny routine.
I expected that guy named Pryor to be some big muckety-muck. Instead his cousin Mark is now Senator. And though I never had Dan-O pegged as the future Texas AG, I was glad to see him make it, even as a Democrat. I have to think that was the wrong political choice, since I'm sure it brought him in contact with the one of the pillars of the Democrat Party, the plaintiff bar, which I'm sure is just as corrupt and corrupting in Texas as it is here in California.
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