Convicted felon running for Mayor of Vermillion

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His campaign resume must note that he's a creative thinker in solving financial problems and values personal freedom. Because as the Vermillion Plain Talk is reporting, James Johnson of Vermillion, former Law School official and convicted felon, is running for mayor.
Officials in Pierre have assured the staff at city hall here that James A. Johnson is permitted to be a candidate in the upcoming June 6 Vermillion mayor's race, despite a string of legal problems that began in 1991 and didn't end until 2003.

The Vermillion man's criminal history includes two simultaneous felony convictions and a stint in the South Dakota penitentiary. He was also taken into custody twice on parole violations, each which returned him to a jail cell.

Those parole violations are related to a string of driving while intoxicated and other traffic violations.

"We've consulted with the secretary of state's office and the (South Dakota) Municipal League, just to make sure that everyone is unanimous on it," Vermillion City Attorney Jim McCulloch said. "As long as he has served his prison sentence and is off of parole, he's basically restored to his rights as a citizen, particularly his voting rights."

On June 11, 1991, Johnson was arrested on a complaint of four counts of grand theft. On Dec. 12, 1991, Johnson pled guilty to two counts of embezzlement, a Class 4 felony punishable by 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.
and..

"When you steal from a widow and an orphan, it's a whole different program. That's what's disturbing about this," Kean told Johnson during the sentencing hearing in 1992. "And it didn't happen in one case. It happened in two cases. You don't take clients' money. You don't borrow from a client, you don't use anything that belongs to a client." Johnson, a former attorney and associate dean at The University of South Dakota School of Law, was disbarred in 1990 by the South Dakota Bar Association.

Read it all here. Not that his past errors are indicative of his future performance, but DANG. That's not the type of resume a candidate typically runs a race on.

I wonder what his campaign slogan is? "Keeping a really, really close eye on the taxpayers' wallet." or "Doing whatever it takes to get the job done." (anyone have one of his ads?)

Stay tuned.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What do you expect, he's a lawyer!
1:18 AM
Anonymous said…
Interesting. Bill Janklow is a convicted felon too....I wonder if he will run again for anything.
10:32 PM
Douglas said…
And even before Janklow breezed through a stop sign at something like highway speed and killed and innocent motorcyclist, he may have had a potful of interesting experiences that might have put most of us in jail.

Still interesting everyday to compare his sentence with those for people who are mentally deranged and do something really stupid like burn up a trailer house and get 10 years in prison for destroying property.

Wonder what the guy's sentence would have been if he drove a truck through the house and claimed he had not seen it?

Anybody want to compare Johnson's political party affiliation with that of Bill Janklow?

But hey skip the politics today and listen to "Victory at Sea" and other music on Public Radio today.
9:28 AM
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