Perjury - Kentucky

U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell sentenced Pikeville businessman Loren Glenn Turner, 53, for perjury charges in Frankfort, Kentucky on Thursday. ^[1] Turner must serve six months in prison, pay $2,100 in fines and fees and be supervised for three years after his release from custody. ^[2]

18 U.S. C. § 1623 involves committing perjury to a grand jury, and this is the statute under which Turner was been charged. Under this section it is a crime for a person to be under oath in any proceeding before any court or grand jury and make any false material declaration or use any information knowing it contains false material declarations. ^[3] The punishment for a violation of section 1623(a) is a fine, imprisonment for up to 5 years, or both.^[4]

The government must prove that: the declarant must be under oath, the testimony must have been given in a proceeding before a court of the United States, the declarant must have knowingly made a false statement and the statement must be material to the proceeding before the court. ^[5]

Turner is one of nearly a dozen Pike County residents who were indicted for election fraud in 2003 resulting from the 2002 Pike County judicial campaign for John Doug Hays. ^[6]

The indictment explains that Hays received “tens of thousands of dollars” for his campaign from deceased Pikeville businessman Ross Harris, who “laundered a portion of his legally excessive contributions” through other persons to avert state requirements that prevents contributors from giving candidates more than $1,000. ^[7]

Turner, Harris' former employee, acted as an intermediary between Harris and “straw contributors” who gave money to campaigns in excess of what state statutes allow, the indictment says. ^[8] Many of the straw contributors were friends and relatives of Turner, who is a cousin of Sen. Johnny Ray Turner. ^[9]

Turner testified at a 2003 grand jury hearing, telling the court that the straw contributors gave their own money, not Harris', to Hays' campaign and he denied giving cash to the straw contributors and said he also gave $1,000 of his own personal money to the campaign. ^[10] These statements resulted in the perjury charge. ^[11]

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed Turner's mail fraud conviction and four-year sentence - in a case related to the election fraud in Hays' campaign - because the mail fraud statute can't be used in Kentucky to prosecute election fraud. ^[12]

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[1] Mary Music, Turner Sentenced to Prison in Perjury Case, Appalachian News Express, February 19, 2007.
[2] Id.
[3] 18 U.S.C. § 1623(a).
[4] Id.
[5] United States v. Simone, 627 F. Supp. 1264, 1267-68 (D.N.J. 1986).
[6] Music, supra, note 1.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.