Former Faulkner County Circuit Judge Mike Maggio tried to withdraw his guilty plea only after he failed a lie-detector test and then disclosed “substantial” new details of the bribery than he had previously revealed, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed Friday.
Those details include more overt discussions with fundraiser Gilbert Baker about the exchange of campaign contributions for a reduction in a jury’s verdict against donor Michael Morton’s nursing home. Among the details: Maggio didn’t receive as much money as he believed he was promised.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patrick Harris and Julie Peters told U.S. District Judge Brian Miller that they hadn’t been able to discover “what motives or pressures caused Maggio to omit this information in prior interviews.” Maggio’s motion to withdraw the plea was filed two days after prosecutors notified him that he had breached his plea deal by withholding information, which could result in a harsher sentence.
Court documents refer to the donor only as Individual A and the fundraiser as Individual B, but the rest of the facts match with donations made by Morton through Baker, a former state senator, in the summer of 2013. A case against Morton’s nursing home was on Maggio’s docket in 2013, even as Morton promised financial support if Maggio wanted to run for the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Ultimately, Maggio reduced the jury’s verdict against Morton’s company from $5.2 million to $1 million.
According to the prosecutors:
“Maggio revealed that Individual B [Baker] told him that Individual A [Morton] was following the case and would be appreciative of Maggio making the right decision. Maggio also revealed that Individual B told Maggio that Individual A’s contributions to Maggio would have to be handled differently than Individual A’s contributions to other candidates. Maggio further revealed that sometime between November 2013 and January 2014, Maggio approached Individual B to ask where the rest of the promised $50,000 was, since Maggio had only received $25,000.”
Maggio, who pleaded guilty in January 2015 to one count of bribery, tried to withdraw the plea earlier this month, claiming he got bad advice from the attorneys who negotiated his plea deal. He is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
In his plea deal, Maggio agreed “to truthfully disclose all information and knowledge regarding any other criminal conduct in Arkansas and elsewhere by the defendant and any and all other persons.”
The plea agreement suggested that Maggio understood he was being bribed but Baker’s language was indefinite, speaking only of making “tough calls” on the bench.
After the polygraph test and subsequent admissions, prosecutors tried to get an explanation from Maggio’s attorneys, Lauren Hoover and Marjorie Rogers, but he stopped talking to them. Hoover and Rogers asked to be relieved of representing him, but Judge Miller denied their request.
Maggio retained a new lawyer, James Hensley Jr., but prosecutors said Hensley “declined to review this evidence.”
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