Austin
Posted on 09/07/2006 9:53:59 AM PDT by SmithL
Former Roane County General Sessions Court Judge Thomas Alva Austin will spend the next 42 months in federal prison for soliciting kickbacks.
"You violated the most sacred charge that is to dispense justice fairly and justly," U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips told Austin today during a sentencing hearing.
"You violated the trust of the citizens of Roane County."
Austin pleaded guilty in March to charges he solicited roughly $14,000 in kickbacks from driving schools where he sent offenders and a probation office where he also ordered offenders to report.
However, FBI Special Agent Bob Gibson has alleged in court records that Austin has been taking kickbacks for at least a decade.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Atchley at today’s hearing pointed to Austin’s own words captured on secretly recorded video and audio tapes to show that Austin had not only used his office for financial gain but also had curried sexual favors from women appearing before him.
Defense attorney Gregory P. Isaacs urged Phillips to put Austin in a halfway house. He argued that it was unfair for Austin to be punished more harshly because he was a judge.
Phillips is allowing Austin to self-report to prison and also will recommend that the former judge serve his time at a minimum security prison.
As a run-up to Austin’s sentencing today, letters of support — customary in most every federal criminal case at which a defendant’s fate hangs in the judicial balance — were filed with the court. Those letters urged leniency for Austin, whose penalty range could go as low as probation or as high as five years in prison.
But what’s not commonly found in a criminal’s sentencing file are letters urging a defendant to be soundly punished. In fact, such letters of condemnation have not been filed in any criminal case in Knoxville’s federal court district in at least a decade, if ever.
Austin inspired at least two.
One is short but hardly sweet, filed in U.S. District Court by Rockwood resident Louis J. Devillon.
"Given that Mr. Austin violated the public trust and the ways in which he did so, I urge you to sentence Mr. Austin to the full amount of time as provided by law," Devillon wrote. "In my mind, that is still inadequate for a jurist that has made a mockery of the judicial system by engaging in many of the activities for which he meted out justice to those that came before his bench."
The other is more detailed and drafted by a man with a bit of notoriety in his own past — former legislator, current lawyer and occasional author Chris Cawood.
Cawood once ran afoul of law enforcement in Roane County when he engaged in an intimate relationship with a client, who then agreed to wear a secret recording device and try to solicit Cawood to participate in a drug transaction.
He didn’t, but the recording captured some erotic goings-on between Cawood and the client. Cawood wound up charged with patronizing prostitution, a case later tossed out by an appellate court. Cawood later sued.
According to Cawood, folks in Roane County have known for years that Austin was corrupt. Just ask his golf mates, the attorney wrote.
"One Kingston lawyer refused to any longer play golf with Austin because he even cheated on the golf course," Cawood wrote in his letter to Phillips.
Cawood urged Phillips to mete out the toughest penalty possible for the disgraced judge.
"In small counties such as Roane and Scott, the sheriff and general sessions court judge are often the most powerful people in the county," Cawood wrote. "Because of their power, I believe that it is imperative that any time a sheriff or general sessions judge is caught, pleads guilty or is found guilty of a violation of public trust, he or she should receive the maximum penalty allowed by law."
More details online and in Friday’s News Sentinel.
Austin
Thats it? The judge was doing this for over 10 years and 42 months is a measley sentence. This stinks but not surprising.
Didn't the penis pump judge get more time than this?
Funny, no where in the article does it state the judge's political party affiliation? Can you guess? Here's a hint: he was a Ray Blanton appointee. If he were a republican it would be mentioned ad nauseum.
The other judge must have gotten an inflated sentence.
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