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Woodruff businessman’s plea for leniency
carried little weight with district judge
By Jay King
HOMETOWN NEWS
The Woodruff businessman held up by many as the embodiment of the American success story will be headed to federal prison for more than four years following his sentencing in U.S. District Court in Greenville last Thursday.
Terry Glenn Lanford, 54, was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison, $40,000 in fines and restitution and three years of supervised release involving mandatory substance abuse counseling and testing for his role in the conspiracy to sell drugs taken from the Spartanburg County Clerk of Court evidence room dating to April 2009.
Lanford pleaded guilty in April to federal drug conspiracy charges in which he entered into a plan to take drugs taken from the evidence room by former Clerk of Court Marcus Kitchens.
Lanford agreed to sell them to a dealer in Florida that he knew from his business dealings there.
Kitchens was sentenced to 70 months in prison in December 2010, and a third man, former Spartanburg County magistrate John Poole, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in putting Kitchens and Lanford together.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Henry M. Herlong Jr. listened as first Lanford’s attorney, Johnny Gasser, then his wife, father and pastor described Lanford’s actions as aberrant and attested to his contrition.
Lanford himself spoke of his remorse in comments prior to Herlong issuing his sentence.
“I just want to stress my deepest remorse,” Lanford told the judge. “I have no idea what was going through my mind.”
For the rest of the story, read this week’s Woodruff News.
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