ANCHORAGE - Letters of support have been filed by friends and former colleagues of former state Rep. Tom Anderson on the eve of his sentencing on federal corruption charges.
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Anderson, a two-term Republican from Anchorage, was convicted in July of seven felonies including bribery, extortion, conspiracy and money laundering. He will be sentenced Monday.
Anderson's lawyer has filed 22 letters of support for U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick to consider.
Glenn Clary, a pastor at Anchorage Baptist Temple, wrote that Anderson is anguished over humiliating his parents and wife and that he believes he damaged the integrity of the Legislature.
House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said Anderson's eager-to-please personality may have gotten him into trouble. However, Anderson was a good legislator and did more than anyone else to modernize the State Crime Lab, Harris wrote.
"No one would deny he has a good heart, and means well. I definitely feel he has been thrown into a pool of 'bigger fish' and hope you will equate his mind-set and actions in contrast to other indicted individuals respectively," Harris wrote.
Anderson's lawyer, Paul Stockler, is asking for a sentence of no more than two years, nine months.
Prosecutors are seeking the maximum, or eight years and one month, which is even more than recommended by the federal probation office in its pre-sentencing report.
"We submit that, in evaluating Anderson's eve-of-sentencing claims of contrition, the Court should consider the fact that Anderson elected to go to trial and have the charges decided by a jury of his peers," prosecutors Nicholas Marsh and Joe Bottini said in their sentencing memorandum.
Around the country, defendants in public corruption cases are being hit with hefty sentences, said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan who writes a blog on white collar crime.
"At one point a sentence over five years would have been almost unheard of in a public corruption case. Now you are seeing it with some regularity," Henning told the Anchorage Daily News in telephone interview.
