Posted on 03/31/2007 10:18:03 AM PDT by Dog Gone
SAN ANTONIO - Former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales became a free man Friday, getting about six months trimmed off his four-year sentence on account of good behavior, authorities said.
Morales, 50, was a two-term attorney general from 1991-98 who helped win a $17 billion settlement against big tobacco companies. In 2002, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor.
The courtroom victory against big tobacco was eventually Morales' undoing. He admitted to falsifying a contract so that a longtime friend and lawyer could personally profit from the settlement. Morales had contended that Houston lawyer Marc Murr was due $560 million from the settlement.
In October 2003, Morales was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to get mental-health counseling and pay more than $330,000 in fines.
In December, he was released from federal prison in Texarkana and placed in a halfway house near San Antonio, authorities said.
After his release, he has until the middle of next week to report to his probation officer. He will be under supervision for three years.
``No matter who it is, him or Martha Stewart, they all got 72 hours to report,'' said Joe Ed Canales, chief federal probation officer for the Western District of Texas.
Morales also must pay $146,112 in income tax liability to the Internal Revenue Service, $36,000 for his three years of federal supervision and $155,000 for the court-appointed lawyer who defended him.
What! they jailed a RAT? Is the jail OK?
And if I remember, these guys didn't even have to give the money back.
BTW the whole thing about the tobacco deal is to transfer huge amounts of money from the private sector to government. Of course, government lawyers are there to get their share of the swag.
An Attorney General can't afford his own attorney? Or are all the attorneys he knows as stupid as he is? YOU MAKE THE CALL!
Looks like he wanted to show some skin there.
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