Duo still faces sentencing for conviction on 14, 16 counts.
Image: Former House Speaker Glen Casada, accompanied by his wife and at right, attorney Ed Yarbrough, leaves the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville after a jury convicted him in a federal corruption case. Image Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
By Sam Stockard [Tennessee Lookout -CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –
Days before sentencing, a federal judge threw out three charges against former House Speaker Glen Casada and his ex-chief of staff Cade Cothren but kept more than a dozen convictions in place, according to news reports.
In a phone hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson determined prosecutors failed to prove that Casada and Cothren were guilty of public corruption and operated as agents of the government, the reports show.
Casada remains convicted on 14 counts and Cothren on 16 counts after a jury found them guilty in May of fraud, bribery, theft, conspiracy and money laundering. One fraud conviction alone comes with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Their attorneys requested a new trial and acquittal just days before their Friday sentencing.
Richardson acquitted them of a count of fraudulently obtaining state property; Casada on a count of soliciting and receiving bribes from programs receiving federal money and Cothren abetting him; and one count of Cothren offering and giving bribes and kickbacks and Casada abetting him, according to the report.
Attorneys for Casada and Cothren requested a mistrial during the four-week proceeding that stretched from mid-April into May after prosecutors inadvertently played an unredacted recording of an FBI interview with Casada that incriminated Cothren.
Casada and Cothren were accused of setting up a secret company called Phoenix Solutions that tapped into the state’s postage and printing program that provides House members $3,000 a year for constituent mailers. Casada and former Rep. Robin Smith, who pleaded guilty and testified against the pair, steered lawmakers’ business to Phoenix Solutions, which was secretly run by Cothren with the front name of “Matthew Phoenix.”
