Posted on 11/28/2007 12:49:58 PM PST by SmithL
John Ford will ask a federal judge today to delay serving his 66-month prison sentence for bribery until either after his Nashville trial is completed next year or until his ex-wife is released from jail where she is serving a drunken-driving sentence.
The former state senator is scheduled to report Dec. 12 to a federal prison facility near El Paso, Texas, but he said that would create a hardship in preparing for his March 4 bribery trial in Nashville.
Ford, in papers filed in federal court, also said he is the custodial parent and sole provider for his four minor children - ages 2 to 15 - while his ex-wife, Tamara Mitchell-Ford, is serving a drunken-driving jail sentence of 11 months and 29 days.
He said incarceration now would leave the children without a custodial parent, Ford said.
“It would be unreasonably harsh and completely unnecessary to inflict such a fate on these children under the circumstances,” his court-appointed attorney Robert Brooks argued in a motion. “The defendant poses no danger to any person were he to remain on bond until the completion of his trial in Nashville or until the mother of his children is free, nor is he a flight risk.”
Federal prosecutors are asking Judge J. Daniel Breen to order Ford to go into custody as scheduled, arguing that he could be transferred to a federal facility in Nashville to prepare for his trial there.
In a six-count federal indictment in Nashville, Ford is accused of concealing $400,000 he received from Doral between 2002 and 2005 and another $400,000 from a second TennCare contractor, OmniCare Health Plan. He also is charged with wire fraud.
(Excerpt) Read more at commercialappeal.com ...
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