Geddings to press appeal further

bniolet — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:01:48 -0400

Former N.C. lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings will appeal his case further, his lawyer said Tuesday, a day after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court upheld Geddings' public corruption conviction.

Geddings will appeal his case to the full nine judges on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the fourth district, based in Richmond, Va., according to Jonathan Edelstein, his lawyer, reports Mark Johnson.

"There are several issues of importance in this appeal that have been the subject of a judicial conversation all over the country," said Edelstein, of New York, "in terms of limiting the scope of honest services fraud."

Geddings was convicted in 2006 of a federal charge of depriving the public of his honest services. He concealed that he had done thousands of dollars worth of work for a lottery vendor when he accepted a seat on the state lottery commission in 2005. He did not disclose the work for Scientific Games on his state ethics form.

He is serving a four-year sentence at a federal prison camp in Jessup, Ga. On Monday, a three-judge panel from the fourth circuit rejected arguments that Edelstein made before them in February that the honest services law was being interpreted too broadly. He emphasized that Geddings did not try to profit from his lottery commission post and that he did no work for the
company after joining the commission.

The next step for Geddings is to ask all nine of the fourth circuit's judges to hear the case, which Edelstein said he would do. Another lawyer in the case, Gene Matthews of Columbia, S.C., spoke with Geddings, who asked for the further appeal, Edelstein said.

"If necessary," he said, "we may end up going (to the Supreme Court of the United States)."