According to this story in the El Paso Times, former County Judge Luther Jones has been released to a halfway house in Houston, Texas.
Convicted former El Paso County Judge and former state Rep. Luther Jones has been released from federal prison and is at a halfway-house in the Houston area, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Jones, 68, who was a central figure in El Paso’s public corruption scandal, is scheduled to be released on July 9, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Jones had previously been an inmate at the Florence Correctional facility, about 90 miles south of Denver.
Apparently Luther was in the ADX, the federal super-max prison featured in a story in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago.
The ADX is the highest-security prison in the country. It was designed to be escape-proof, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, a place to incarcerate the worst, most unredeemable class of criminal — “a very small subset of the inmate population who show,” in the words of Norman Carlson, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, “absolutely no concern for human life.” Ted Kaczynski and the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph call the ADX home. The 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is held there, too, along with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; and the former Bonanno crime-family boss Vincent Basciano. Michael Swango, a serial-killing doctor who may have poisoned 60 of his patients, is serving three consecutive life sentences; Larry Hoover, the Gangster Disciples kingpin made famous by rappers like Rick Ross, is serving six; the traitorous F.B.I. agent Robert Hanssen, a Soviet spy, 15.
And former El Paso County Judge Luther Jones. From the El Paso Times:
Jones, a longtime lawyer and former political power broker, was convicted in 2011 of taking part in a conspiracy to rig a contract to digitize county records. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, deprivation of honest services and other federal charges. He was sentenced to six years in federal prison.
That’s weird, right? The ADX doesn’t seem like a place to store someone convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Do you suppose the feds were leaning on Luther to get him to flip? Are there other fish to fry? I reckon someone owes Luther big time.
I agree with you totally. This case smelled from beginning to end. I know Luther as an intelligent and erudite individual. He was elegant in word and deed. It certainly doesn’t fit the person I know, my estimation of him remains unchanged despite his conviction.