Peel
Former Madison County attorney Gary Peel, 67, who was found guilty in 2007 on possession of child pornography, bankruptcy fraud and obstruction of justice charges, was resentenced Monday in federal court in East St. Louis.
His length of imprisonment, however, was not reduced.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois dismissed the obstruction of justice charge, after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2010 that either the bankruptcy fraud or obstruction of justice charge should be dropped. The appeals court decided that Peel had been sentenced twice for the same crime, as his verdicts for obstruction of justice and bankruptcy fraud depended on the same facts.
At Monday's re-sentencing, U.S. District Judge William Stiehl again sentenced Peel to 12 years imprisonment. Peel received a concurrent sentence of 10 years imprisonment on each of two child pornography counts and a sentence of two years on the bankruptcy fraud count to run consecutively to the child pornography counts, for a total of 12 years, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court turned Peel down in his conviction that involved nude photographs he took of his 16 year-old sister-in-law in 1974.
In 2006, Peel mixed blackmail and child pornography by copying the photographs and sticking the pictures in his former wife Deborah Peel's mailbox.
He had threatened to make them public if Deborah kept trying to enforce their divorce agreement through his bankruptcy proceedings.
She called postal authorities, who called federal prosecutors.
Agents wired her and sent her to meet Gary, who proposed to swap his photos for her signature on a settlement.
Arrest and conviction followed.
Peel is serving time at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Ashland, a low security facility in northeastern Kentucky. His release date is listed as Sept. 20, 2017.