BEEF PLANT UPDATE: Morehead asks for probation, home confinement
CK Morehead, a Georgia businessman ensnared in the Mississippi Beef Plant scandal, has asked the U.S. District Court to consider how much his family needs him and to sentence him to probation and home confinement.
In documents made public today, Morehead’s attorney, Jerome Froelich Jr., notes that 86 people have written in support of him as their colleague or friend, as Chief Judge Michael P. Mills decides how to punish the Japan-born executive.
He is set for sentencing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oxford.
Froelich writes that Morehead takes medication for anxiety, acid reflux, heartburn and allergic rhinitis.
He also notes Morehead’s family will suffer, if he goes to prison, because he “is an essential care giver” to his 79-year-old father with Parkinson’s disease, his frail 69–year-old mother, his wife with medical and emotional problems and a 30-year-old daughter with financial and emotional needs.
“It is important to remember in this case,” Froelich writes, “that none of CK’s actions were responsible for the failure of the Mississippi Beef Project.
“That project failed because there were insufficient cattle in Mississippi to support the project and Mr. (Richard) Hall conned Mississippi to invest in the ill conceived and mismanaged project.”
Two other TFG executives pleaded guilty for their parts in a scheme to offer an illegal “gratuity” to then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s illfated re-election campaign in 2003.
NE MS Daily Journal
12/8/8
Magnolia Tribune
