(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court today rejected Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford’s bid to overturn his conviction and 110-year prison sentence for running what federal prosecutors called a $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans turned aside 10 arguments raised by Stanford.
These included that he was not competent to stand trial, the government did not prove its case, the sentence was too long, and the trial judge was biased toward prosecutors, including by denying him a lawyer of his choice.
“We find no evidence that the district court was partial to the government in derogation of Stanford’s right to a fair trial under the Constitution,” Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote for a three-judge panel.
Stanford represented himself in his appeal, after having retained more than a dozen lawyers over the course of his criminal case. He could not immediately be reached for comment.
Once considered a billionaire but later declared indigent, Stanford was convicted by a Houston federal jury in March 2012 on fraud, conspiracy and obstruction charges.
