Lucy Morgan, Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief
E-mail Lucy Morgan at morgan@sptimes.com
Posted on 08/24/2005 10:42:43 PM PDT by lunarbicep
Former U.S. Rep. Richard Kelly died Monday night in Stevensville, Mont., where he lived for almost 20 years in a sort of self-imposed exile after his 1981 Abscam bribery conviction.
Mr. Kelly, 81, was one of seven members of Congress snared in Abscam, an elaborate sting involving undercover FBI agents posing as aides to Arab sheiks seeking favors from Congress. Mr. Kelly contended he was conducting his own investigation of "suspicious characters" who surrounded him.
Before he was elected to Congress in 1974, Mr. Kelly spent 14 years as a circuit judge in Pasco and Pinellas counties. He developed a reputation as a maverick in frequent clashes with fellow judges and a group of Dade City lawyers who had long controlled the small-town courthouse where Mr. Kelly worked.
He survived an impeachment by the Florida House of Representatives in 1963 and an investigation by the Judicial Qualifications Commission in 1968.
In 1968, when some accused Mr. Kelly of being crazy, he had himself examined and declared sane by doctors at Duke University. In later years, he frequently described himself as the only judge or member of Congress formally declared sane.
In 1974, Mr. Kelly was elected to Congress and was re-elected in 1976 and 1978.
He was defeated in 1980 in the wake of Abscam by Republican Bill McCollum of Altamonte Springs.
Convicted of taking $25,000 from undercover agents in January 1981, Mr. Kelly initially won a reprieve when the trial judge, U.S. District Judge William B. Bryant, threw out the jury verdict. But he was sentenced to prison after an appeals court reinstated his conviction.
Bryant railed against the FBI, saying the government "brought about the downfall of a person who, if left alone, might well have lived out his life as a law abiding citizen."
The judge offered to dismiss the charges mid trial if Mr. Kelly would use an entrapment defense. But Mr. Kelly rejected the idea because it would have required him to admit he committed the crime.
Mr. Kelly blamed a group of suspicious characters who surrounded him in the months leading up to the Abscam charges in early 1980. He laid much of the blame on a key aide, J.P. Maher III, who used Mr. Kelly's office to seek favors for friends with cocaine convictions. Mr. Kelly fired Maher, saying he allowed known felons to be associated with the office.
After exhausting his appeals, Mr. Kelly spent 13 months of a 6- to 18-month sentence at the federal prison camp at Eglin Air Force Base and a St. Petersburg halfway house before he was released in 1986.
For years, Mr. Kelly tried without success to promote interest in a book about his contention he was entrapped.
Anthony S. Battaglia, the St. Petersburg lawyer who defended Mr. Kelly, said Wednesday he was saddened by the news of his old friend's death. Mr. Kelly and Battaglia met in law school at the University of Florida and cemented their friendship in watermelon patches where they earned extra money during the summer of 1951.
Battaglia was the son of a well-to-do Binghamton, N.Y., produce company owner and Mr. Kelly was a foster child who had been abandoned by his parents, but they became lifelong friends. When Mr. Kelly was a judge, he sometimes appointed Battaglia to defend murder suspects in his courtroom despite the fact that Battaglia had become a successful lawyer in a neighboring county.
"We loved one another," Battaglia said Wednesday. "He was a very difficult man if you weren't close to him, but if you were close enough to learn what kind of mind he had, you loved him."
When Mr. Kelly was indicted in Abscam, Battaglia put most of his work aside and spent countless hours and thousands of dollars defending his friend.
Mr. Kelly returned to Florida eight years ago to celebrate Battaglia's 70th birthday, but had spent the last couple of years in declining health with Pick's disease, similar to Alzheimer's.
Whitesitt Funeral Home in Stevensville, a small town 25 miles from Missoula, is handling funeral arrangements. Mr. Kelly's body will be cremated and the ashes returned to Florida, said funeral home owner Dean Whitesitt. Other arrangements are incomplete.
Mr. Kelly's wife, Claire, could not be reached for comment.
Pinellas County. Hmmm... Seems like he was OK and with his peers until he tried to go national with his corruption.
Just another Democrat hack caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
I've read this article from beginning to end.
What's the one thing I can't find in the article?
The political party of former Rep. Kelly is never
mentioned. What an annoying article. The only clue
to the guy's party is when the article says he ran
against a Republican. This sort of bias happens
over and over again in all major publications and
news stories when DEMOCRATS are caught doing
something illegal or of dubious morality.
Lucy Morgan, Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief
E-mail Lucy Morgan at morgan@sptimes.com
Many thanks for the correction (Search Engine Is Our Friend).
And a WW2 veteran and Marine, to boot - what a waste.
Kelly was the only Republican involved in the Abscam scandal, which involved several Democrats. He was a godsend at the time for the liberal media, who used his lone GOP presence to declare an almost entirely Democrat scandal to be a "bipartisan" scandal.
McCain served that same function a few years later when he and four Democrats became the Keating Five. This allowed the media to declare it to be a "bipartisan" scandal. Seems like McCain was helping to provide cover for the 'Rats even back then!
About the only thing I remember from Abscam is Rita Jenrette (I was about 19 at the time, y'understand...)
Kinda funny.
yeaaah.... understood ;)
yes
Another dead politician. And yet, I observe no weeping in my vicinity.
My uncle's crime was to be a Republican back when Democrats were putting dark-skinned men in jail on the basis of their pigment. He let some folks out of jail because they were being held illegally. That is why the KKK-style Florida leg wanted him out of office.
I'm a liberal through and through and I'm sure my uncle and I might have had some disagreements if we'd ever had the opportunity to meet face to face. As it is, he went into hiding and I missed knowing him except as a voice over the telephone. A beautifully idealistic and romantic man.
He's one of my heroes and I hope that someday his story is told in its entirety.
He was a Republican in an age of yellow Democrats. We didn't share the same party, but I share his idealism and devotion to this country and our constitution. He was a rara avis, truly a lovely man.
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