Special to the News
On Wednesday Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced that convicted former Eleventh Judicial Presiding Circuit Judge Gilbert P. Self has received a sentence of a total of 618 months of incarceration after being convicted in a three-week trial of 15 counts of abuse of public office, one count of lying to the Examiners of Public Accounts and one count of perjury in the first degree.
Judge Tim Jolley handed down the sentence, noting the seriousness of the offenses committed and that they were committed with a sense of entitlement. He ultimately handed down a sentence of 618 months, with 144 months to serve. Self was also fined $5,000.
During the trial, jurors heard evidence about how Self used Lauderdale County judicial accounts to fund personal vacations, including a ski trip to Montana; a cycling trip across Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania; and a beach trip with his son. They also heard about how Self was using the judicial account to write himself checks for tuition and fees for conferences he did not attend to float his personal bank accounts when his accounts were overdrawn, and how he was paying himself for vacations he didn’t actually go on.
They also heard about a number of personal items that were purchased with the accounts, including a couch for his home, his son’s college diploma frame, personal prescription eyeglasses, and alcohol on a weekend trip to Birmingham.
Finally, the jurors heard about how Self tried to escape accountability for his use of public funds, including how he made false representations to the Examiners of Public Accounts about the nature of the expenditures and lying to the grand jury of Lauderdale County. Additional evidence of Self’s abuses of public office came forward at sentencing.
“Public office is a public trust, and no one is entitled to steal from the public, especially those sworn to uphold the law,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said. “This sentence sends a clear message that corruption will be investigated, prosecuted, and punished in Alabama, no matter the title or position of the offender, and that our office will aggressively enforce the state’s public corruption laws to hold officials accountable when they betray that trust.”
Marshall thanked Special Prosecutions Division, particularly Assistant Attorneys General Alana K. Cammack and Jasper B. Roberts Jr. and Assistant Chief Deputy Clark Morris, and the special agents that investigated the case. He also thanked the Alabama Department of Public Accounts and the Lauderdale County Circuit Court for their assistance in this case.
