Former Auburn Representative and House Speaker Mike Hubbard's criminal appeal of 12 felony ethics convictions can now move forward after months of delays.
Lee County Circuit Clerk Mary Roberson filed the Clerk's Record on Appeal last week. The needed set of documents, which includes all motions,
The filing of the Clerk's Record on Appeal has been delayed since Hubbard first launched his appeal in October 2016. Roberson has said the record is "complex" and "voluminous," requiring time extensions for her office to prepare it.
In total, the record is more than 7,800 pages and includes filings from pretrial hearings starting in October 2014, when Hubbard was indicted on 23 felony ethics charges of using his office as House speaker for personal gain.
The Court of Criminal Appeals has granted several time extensions since November 2016. Each time, the appeal was delayed by 28 days.
"While this number of filings alone are rare in a criminal case and would warrant an extension of time, many of these filings are Under Seal, which will make
Hubbard was removed from office in June 2016 after being found guilty of 12 felony ethics violations — violations of the same ethics law he himself helped push through the Legislature in December 2010 during his first special legislative session as speaker.
In July, Lee County Circuit Judge Jacob Walker sentenced Hubbard to four years total in prison.
In total, Walker — who sat on the bench over Hubbard's case since his indictment in 2014 — set his base sentence at 12 years. Four years of that sentence would be served in a state penitentiary, and the remaining eight years will be supervised probation.
The total minimum sentence, if Walker had chosen it, could have been 24 years in prison. Instead, Walker chose to split each charge and then allow Hubbard to serve many of them concurrently with one another.
In the appeal, Hubbard's attorneys suggested they will take the Lee County verdict to task on jury misconduct and court error in ruling on pre-trial,
Bill Baxley, Hubbard's lead attorney, has said the jury was biased against the former speaker.
"We're very confident that we're going to prevail, and he's going to be totally exonerated at the end of the day," Baxley told The Plainsman in October 2016.
Juror misconduct would only be part of their larger argument during
"I think that was the heart of it, [but] that's just part of it," he said. "There's so much there. That's only part of it."
Lawyers for the prosecution and Hubbard's defense have been waiting on the updated court records to begin filing written briefs in the appeal. Now that the court record has
Upon conviction in June, Hubbard was immediately removed from both his office as Alabama House speaker and his seat as Auburn's House representative. A special election was called by Gov. Robert Bentley in late June to replace Hubbard's seat.
Rep. Joe Lovvorn, R-Auburn, who is now serving in Montgomery, won the seat in the September special election.
The former speaker was found guilty of voting on
Hubbard, who still maintains his innocence, will remain free on bond until a verdict is rendered in the appeal.
"There was no crime," Baxley said. "This should have never gone to the jury, in our opinion."
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