Former governor loses bid to withdraw tax plea

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider an appeal from former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who wants to withdraw his 1998 guilty plea to tax conspiracy.

Tucker’s lawyer, Jeffrey Rosenzweig of Little Rock, Ark., told justices that an appeals court wrongly denied Tucker a new hearing on whether the plea was voluntary.

Tucker’s tax fraud case arose during the investigation of his predecessor, Bill Clinton. An independent counsel spent more than six years investigating the business dealings of the Clintons. In all, 14 people were convicted in what became known as the Whitewater investigations.

Tucker resigned in 1996 after a conviction in a separate Whitewater case.

“In this case, the evidence as a whole is such that no jury would have convicted Tucker” of conspiracy, Rosenzweig said in a filing.

Justices did not comment in refusing to hear the appeal.

Tucker’s case has been to the court before. In 2004 justices declined to consider whether the former governor was wrongly barred from raising new arguments in challenging his tax conspiracy conviction.

The case is Tucker v. United States, 05-913.

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