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Meg Scott Phipps Seeks Sentence Reduction

The former state Agriculture Commissioner is serving a four-year prison term for her role as ringleader of a campaign finance scandal.

Raleigh, NC -- -- Former state Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps, serving a four-year prison term for her role as ringleader of a campaign finance scandal, wants a federal judge to reduce her sentence. In seeking a lesser sentence, Phipps' attorneys cite a recent US Supreme Court decision that declared unconstitutional the sentencing guidelines used by federal judges. "We're going to try to do anything we can to improve her situation," said Hill Allen, one of the Phipps attorneys who filed the motion. "She wants to do everything she can to get home to her children and husband." Phipps, the daughter and granddaughter of former North Carolina governors, pleaded guilty in November 2003 to five felony counts. She admitted taking more than $82,500 in illegal contributions from carnival companies seeking to do business at state-operated fairs. She also acknowledged converting some cash to her personal use. Phipps was one of seven people who pleaded guilty to federal charges as part of a scandal involving fund-raising for her 2000 campaign and payments made by carnival companies to influence the awarding of contracts at state fairs. Three of the seven received prison time, but only Phipps remains in prison, with 21/2 years still left on her sentence. "The defendant's 48-month term of imprisonment under the mandatory guidelines appears especially unreasonable in comparison with the far shorter sentences imposed on the defendants in related cases," Wade Smith, another Phipps attorney, wrote in a four-page motion filed Feb. 28. At the time of Phipps' sentencing last March, mandatory sentencing guidelines required that she be sentenced to between 46 and 57 months in prison. But in a January ruling, the US Supreme Court said federal judges have been improperly adding prison time to the sentences of some criminals. The justices said the judges should only consult the guidelines on an advisory basis in determining reasonable guidelines. The ruling does not appear likely to apply to Phipps' case, since it is not retroactive, and Phipps' case is neither pending nor on appeal. But Allen said judges are still trying to sort out the impact of the high court's ruling, so he and Phipps' other lawyer figured it was worth a try. It "would not make much sense for the sentencing guidelines to be mandatory on one day and then merely advisory" the next, he said. "The (trial judge) might have done something differently if the court had not been absolutely bound by the sentencing guidelines," Allen said. The US Attorney's Office in Raleigh declined comment on the motion Thursday. The motion for a reduced sentence is expected to be reviewed by a judge, who can then seek a response from prosecutors and decide whether to hold a hearing. In the motion, Smith says Phipps had been a model prisoner at the West Virginia federal prison camp where she is being held, even teaching classes to other female prisoners. For a few months, Phipps was a fellow inmate to domestic mogul Martha Stewart, who was released earlier this month.

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