Panel expects consequences await Maggio

CONWAY - The judicial agency investigating campaign contributions and other issues relating to Circuit Judge Michael Maggio expects he will face either a disciplinary charge or a mutually accepted sanction, an agency spokesman said Tuesday.

“The judge is cooperating with the investigation,” Emily White, deputy executive director of the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, said in an emailed statement that Maggio’s attorneys and the commission agreed to release.

“Questions regarding timing of future events, as with any litigation, are difficult to answer. However, the parties anticipate either a public charging instrument or an agreed sanction to be issued by this office by approximately mid-August,” White added.

Under commission procedures, a public charging instrument refers to procedures that lead to a disciplinary charge against a judge. After completing its review of the evidence, an investigative panel - having acted somewhat like a grand jury - forwards its findings and supporting facts to the nine-member commission, which later holds a public hearing.

The agency has previously said it is investigating allegations involving thousands of dollars in contributions made on July 8 by nursing-home owner Michael Morton of Fort Smith to eight political action committees. Seven of those PACs later gave money to Maggio’s campaign for his since-halted race for the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Six of the PACs did so almost exclusively.

July 8 was the day Maggio heard a plea from one of Morton’s 32 nursing homes to reduce a Faulkner County jury’s judgment in a negligence lawsuit resulting from the 2008 death of patient Martha Bull, 76. Three days later, Maggio reduced the $5.2 million judgment to $1 million.

Morton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in March that he had thought the PACs were set up for Maggio’s campaign.

The commission also is investigating online comments Maggio made about women, sex, bestiality and race, among other topics. He has apologized for them.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has stripped Maggio, 52, of Conway of all of hiscases until further notice. Maggio, whose salary this year is $138,981.96, remains a judge in the 20th Judicial Circuit, which covers Faulkner, VanBuren and Searcy counties. His term expires at year’s end.

In other developments Tuesday, an attorney for Maggio criticized the lawyer representing two of Bull’s daughters, and that lawyer, Thomas Buchanan, responded; a former PAC officer said he was “furious” about the PAC situation; and the Maggio attorney amended some of the judge’s former statements of financial interest and resent another one to the state.

In an email interview, one of Maggio’s attorneys, Lauren Hamilton, was asked whether Maggio denied wrongdoing in relation to the contributions and the PACs to which Morton contributed.

She replied, “Judge Maggio is cooperating with [the judicial commission] on all investigations being conducted by the Director.

“Mr. Buchanan as counsel for the Bulls had the option when Judge Maggio remitted the jury verdict to ask for a new trial; file an appeal; or accept the reduced verdict. Mr. Buchanan and his clients opted to accept the reduced verdict and instead is retrying the case in the media. As stated in the agreed upon press statement, there is no other public information available at this time.”

That statement made no mention of the Bull family’s trial options.

Told of Hamilton’s comment, Buchanan said, “My clients obviously didn’t know about the PACs that were formed around the time of the hearing and the fact that Mr. Morton or someone within his organization wrote checks to these PACs on July 8, which was the date of the hearing. Certainly, we would like to have had the benefit of that information in making our decision.”

The issue did not come to light until last month.

“I’m not going to try this case in the media,” Buchanan added in a telephone interview.

“The bottom line is this: The timing looks very, very suspicious, and given the timing, it appears my clients shouldn’t have been put in that position.”

Buchanan questioned why Morton was asked to support Maggio long before the 180-day period when a judicial candidate can legally begin seeking and accepting donations.

Morton has said that lobbyist Linda Leigh Flanagin, the only employee of a consulting firm formed by former state Sen. Gilbert Baker, asked Morton for his support during either the lawsuit’s May 2013 trial or when the judgment-reduction issue was under consideration the next July.

Flanagin has not returned repeated messages seeking comment. Baker has said he did not tell Flanagin to make that request.

Earlier Tuesday, one of the former PAC officers, Ancil Lea III of Conway, said he had never been notified that his name was on registration forms for that PAC.

“Someone took great liberties with my name without any kind of consent of my own,” Lea said in a statement. “I am furious that my name has been associated with these actions. … I understand that others have found themselves in the same situation through similar [PACs] that were created.”

Last week, attorney Chris Stewart, who created the PACs at an unidentified client’s request, said he had removed the names of Lea and Cheryl Loetscher as officers in accord with their instructions.

Stewart said his client had told him that he had all of the officers’ approval. So, Stewart said, he was shocked to learn that three of them said they had been unaware their names were used. Stewart did not identify the third person, but Don Thomas, who has an office beside Baker’s private Conway office, has said he didn’t know anything about the PACs.

In an April 1 letter to Stewart, also released Tuesday, Lea said he had “never been aware of any activities” of the Citizens for Information Technology PAC that listed his name.

Secretary of State spokesman Alex Reed said Tuesday that Stewart has submitted forms terminating five of the PACs - something Stewart had said last week he planned to do.

Stewart did not return phone or email messages asking about the remaining three PACs.

Hamilton faxed Maggio’s 2012 statement of interest to the secretary of state’s office Tuesday morning. Maggio had submitted a statement for 2012 in early 2013, but two pages were missing from the copy on file. Hamilton said in an accompanying letter Tuesday that she was correcting an “error in [fax] transmission.”

The full document now says Maggio made more than $12,500 that year as a circuit judge. It also lists two companies in which he says he has holdings or assets of more than $12,500 each, Northwestern Mutual and Hartford Insurance Annuity.

Hamilton has described these holdings as “whole life policies.”

The state asks public officials to state whether a sum is more than $1,000 or more than $12,500 and does not require a specific amount.

Hamilton also faxed amendments to Maggio’s financial statements for 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 to add those two holdings. Additionally, the amended statement for 2009 lowers his holding in the Edward Jones investment firm to more than $1,000.

The corrected or amended reports were filed after Buchanan asked the judicial commission Monday to investigate the source of the Northwestern Mutual and Hartford Insurance holdings. Buchanan said Maggio had listed them on his statement of financial interest for 2013 but not on earlier ones. David Sachar, the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission’s executive director, said later the agency would investigate.