Posted by A federal jury convicted a former New York state judge Thursday of attempted extortion and attempted soliciting of a bribe for pressuring a lawyer to give $10,000 to his defense fund.
Federal prosecutors said Thomas Spargo pressured the lawyer, who had cases pending before Spargo when he was a state Supreme Court justice in 2003, to help the judge cover legal bills from an ongoing battle with the state’s judicial discipline committee.
“The jury system works whether you like it or not,” said Spargo, who had a long career as a Republican expert on New York elections law before becoming a judge. In 2000, he was part of GOP team that went to Florida to help battle for George W. Bush during the presidential election recount.
Spargo, who was elected to the state’s trial level court in 2001, could face up to 30 years in federal prison when he is sentenced Dec. 21.
He was removed from the bench in 2006 on the recommendation of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which cited the pressure he put on lawyers and which criticized some of his earlier actions as a town justice in suburban Albany.
“I think that Tom had been punished enough through the commission’s proceedings and the loss of his judgeship,” said E. Stewart Jones, Spargo’s lawyer. “This is overkill.”
He argued during trial there were big gaps in the prosecution case, including no mention of money in Spargo’s holiday phone call to Bruce Blatchly, the Ulster County lawyer who contacted authorities.
“You don’t check your common sense at the door,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Pilger told the jurors. He said Spargo called Blatchly to inform him he had a continuing assignment to Ulster County and that Blatchly’s own divorce case was assigned to a judge who was Spargo’s friend.
What is the rest of the story? Where is Spargo today? Was he influenced by others while performing his duties? How far did the investigation go? Was he prosecuted based strictly on the Judicial and Ethics proceedings?
Like anyone even WANTS to print anything that could result in litigation from a scumbag like Spargo. You can thank him for Florida saying “we need the US Supreme Court to step in, we can’t count the votes”. Thus Bush v Gore, the decision of December 12, 2000. “Just this once” says the decision.
Now look at this country. Instead of a Nobel Peace Prize,Grammy and Oscar winner, we got a rich incompetent CEO wannabe.
Remember him as part of the people who killed America