In a new appeal, former Vicksburg attorney Robert Arledge has asked his prison sentence on mail and wire fraud charges tied to tort claims involving the diet drug Fen-Phen be either ended or shortened.

In lengthy documents filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Arledge explains a series of actions he says show the defense attorneys he hired were, in essence, working against his interests, denying him his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights during his criminal trial.

The case is before U.S. District Judge David Bramlette, who sentenced Arledge in October 2007 to 6 1/2 years in prison. The conviction was affirmed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and in April 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the sentence.

Arledge, 52, represents himself in the appeal, which he may do although he lost his license to practice law after the conviction. 

In the 57-page motion and an accompanying chronology, Arledge claims his lead attorney, Karl Koch, was pre-occupied with personal issues stemming from his wife’s 2006 arrest in Baton Rouge on drug charges. Delays in the trial’s sentencing phase the summer of 2007 were attributed to the death of Marcie Koch in Tucson, Ariz. Arledge also says attorney Robert McDuff, whom he hired to assist Koch, did not notify him that he had represented attorney Shane Langston, whose firm Langston, Frazer, Sweet and Freese had dealings with claimants in the original Mississippi Fen-Phen litigation.

Prosecutors in the criminal case said Arledge knowingly presented false claims on behalf of ineligible clients to a settlement fund set up after the Food and Drug Administration pulled the drug from the market in 1997. Research found the drug caused heart problems. Claims of about $250,000 each were paid based on faked claims to have taken the drugs or suffered ill-effects, with awards going mostly to people from Jefferson County.

In sum, the appeal says Arldege, then an associate of the Richard Schwartz firm in Jackson, was not in the client solicitation, claims acceptance or payment decision-making chain.

Arledge was among attorneys paid millions in fees from the drug-makers settlement fund and is the only attorney prosecuted for submitting faked claims. Several payees have been prosecuted.

Arledge is at the Montgomery (Ala.) Federal Prison Camp at Maxwell Air Force Base. His release date is Oct. 12, 2013, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com