Outside the Beltway

Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland Out of Jail

James Joyner · Friday, February 10, 2006 · 2 comments

Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland has been released from prison a few months early for good behavior.

Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland left a federal prison camp Friday after serving more than 10 months for corruption that forced him from office in 2004. Rowland, 48, was released from Loretto Federal Correctional Institution in western Pennsylvania at about 5:20 a.m., said Ruth Bracken, a prison spokeswoman.

He has three days to report to probation officers, who will fit him with an electronic ankle bracelet and place him under house arrest for four months. He also must perform 300 hours of community service.

The three-term Republican governor resigned in July 2004 amid a corruption investigation and impeachment inquiry, then pleaded guilty the following December to one count of conspiracy to steal honest services, a combination of mail and tax fraud. He admitted accepting more than $100,000 in vacations and chartered trips to Las Vegas from a state contractor and a charter jet company that received a state tax break.

Though he received a year-and-a-day sentence, inmates can be released for good behavior after serving about 80 percent of their sentences.

Given the nature of the corruption involved here, it’s a shame that he only served ten months in prison. Certainly, men who committed less egregious crimes have done far, far more time than Rowlands.

Still, 366 days was what the plea bargain netted and he presumably was a good boy while in the pokey. Presumably, his political career, at least, is over. One suspects there will not be a Marion Berry-style resurrection for Rowland.