The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied former Judge Michael Maggio‘s petition to consider the appeal of his bribery conviction. The decision means the former Faulkner County circuit judge’s legal appeals are likely at an end.
Maggio, 62, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a federal bribery charge but soon began unsuccessfully trying to take back the plea. In 2016, a federal judge in Little Rock sentenced Maggio to 10 years in prison, where he served less than half that time before being released.
Still, Maggio persisted in trying to get his case dismissed. In October, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said no after Maggio missed a filing deadline. He then sought to appeal that decision to the full court and finally to the Supreme Court, both of which ruled against him without comment.
Maggio’s case has its origins in the 2008 death of a Perryville woman, 76-year-old Martha Bull, at a Greenbrier nursing home. A lawsuit over Bull’s death landed in Maggio’s court, and in 2013 he reduced a jury’s $5.2 million award to Bull’s family to $1 million. Federal prosecutors said Maggio was bribed with campaign contributions from the nursing home’s owner, Michael Morton of Fort Smith. At the time, Maggio was running for the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
Gilbert Baker, a former chair of the Republican Party of Arkansas and former state senator, had arranged for the contributions from Morton to Maggio. He denied any wrongdoing, as did Morton. Baker’s first trial ended with an acquittal on one charge and a hung jury on the others. In 2022, federal prosecutors dropped the remaining charges against Baker without explanation. Morton was never charged.