A court of appeals has rejected disgraced former Cuyahoga County commissioner Jimmy Dimora’s latest appeal following his release from prison to home confinement after more than a decade in prison.
The Sixth Circuit Court denied Dimora’s challenge of the court’s conviction on a slew of charges in 2012 for accepting more than 100 bribes and trying to fix eight court cases.
Dimora argued that errors during the trial significantly affected its outcome, citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision on what constituted an “official act,” which led to the vacating of two of the 32 counts against him and reduced his sentence from 28 years to 23.
The appeals court ruled that a reasonable jury would not dispute the court’s determination that those alleged instructional errors were harmless and that the exclusion of an ethics report from Dimora did not substantially impact the integrity of the trial.
With the sentence reduction last year, Dimora still has 13 years to go, but he will spend the remainder of his sentence in home confinement thanks to a provision of the pandemic-era CARES Act, which allows imprisoned individuals to be placed in home confinement. Its use was extended beyond the expiration of the covered emergency period.
Upon release, Dimora was "relieved, happy and shocked," according to The Marshall Project.
He is under home confinement and staying with family.
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