Ex-Senator John Ford will have to wait a little longer to find out his legal fate.more>> Sen. Ward Crutchfield changed his plea to guilty Thursday in his federal corruption case. Former state Sen. Kathryn Bowers is also expected to change her plea.more>> The Memphis jury convicted former state Sen. John Ford of bribery. He was acquitted of three counts of witness intimidation. The federal jury deadlocked on the extortion charge against him.more>> Federal prosecutors will not retry former state Sen. John Ford for extortion. A jury in Memphis deadlocked on this charge at his trial last week.more>> U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell granted a defense motion to delay former state Sen. John Ford's trial from May 22 so the defense can prepare for it.more>>
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors are trying to keep a diamond-studded Rolex wristwatch seized from former Sen. John Ford before he was convicted of bribery in the Tennessee Waltz corruption investigation.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court Ford got the watch valued at $70,000 from a Memphis developer through bribery and it should be forfeited to the government.
The watch, which Scholl has said Ford got legally by swapping timepieces with developer Rusty Hyneman, wasn't directly related to Tennessee Waltz.
But prosecutors presented during Ford's trial some recordings from the Waltz investigation of the then-lawmaker bragging to an undercover agent that he got the watch for helping Hyneman avoid paying state fines for pollution at a Memphis subdivision.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
