Posted on 05/31/2007 6:02:07 PM PDT by SmithL
Indicted Memphis City Councilman Rickey Peete will resign Friday, council chairman Tom Marshall announced today at City Hall.
In a letter to Marshall, Peete wrote: "Effective June 1, 2007, I will resign my seat on the Memphis City Council. I want to thank the citizens of District 8 for giving me the opportunity to represent them. God bless the city of Memphis."
Peete’s move came during the final day of the council’s budget hearings, after he and Councilman Edmund Ford had staved off two previous attempts by fellow council members seeking their resignations. Ford remains in office.
The pair have served under a cloud since they were indicted in December for allegedly taking payoffs to approve a development and billboard along Interstate 240.
Peete, 52, is accused of taking $14,500 in exchange for his vote. He has pleaded not guilty and has a court date June 22.
Peete already has a 1989 conviction for extortion as a council member.
Peete first resigned from the council in September 1989 less than halfway through his first term and just one day before he was to appear in federal court to be sentenced on the extortion conviction.
He served two years in federal prison for taking a $1,000 bribe for a zoning vote. Peete planned then to move his family to Atlanta and vowed never to seek public office again.
He changed his mind a few years later, saying of his conviction, "I’m willing to cast that into the sea of forgetfulness and put all of that behind us and move forward."
Voters apparently agreed and re-elected him to the council in 1995.
(Excerpt) Read more at commercialappeal.com ...
Lookie, lookie.
about time
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