By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black newspapers (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) and (www.clevelandurbannews.com). Reach us by phone at 216-659-0473 and by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) (pictured) and his wife Sandra, a former Chicago City councilwoman, were sentenced on Wednesday to 30 months and a year in federal prison respectively after Jackson, a son of former presidential candidate and Civil Rights icon the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr, pleaded guilty earlier this year to misuse of $750,000 in campaign funds and his wife to filing false tax returns.
The couple, who arrived in court yesterday morning arm and arm, has two children. He resigned his congressional seat last year, and she, her seat on city council.
Jesse Jackson Jr,. 48, spent the money on a high priced lifestyle, fancy clothes, lavish vacations and a $43,000 Rolex watch, court documents reveal. He will serve his sentence first, and was remorseful at sentencing.
"Today I manned up and tried to accept responsibility for the errors of my ways and I still believe in resurrection " said Jackson , the son of a Baptist preacher.
Jackson Jr. pleaded with federal district court Judge Amy Berman to let him serve his wife's sentence in addition to his own, an emotional courtroom scene before his father and others, but to no avail.
The judge did not take into account his claim of bi-polar disease as a reason for his behavior, though the former lawmaker, who wept noticeably before the judge, spent four months in the hospital for it, his lawyers said.
President Barack Obama, a former U.S. senator from Illinois and friend to Jesse Jackson Jr., who was his 2008 presidential campaign national co-chairperson, did not immediately release a statement.
The fall from grace of a son of one of the nation's most prominent Civil Rights activist next to the Rev. Al Sharpton has stunned America's Black community.
Rev. Jackson did not release a statement after sentencing or even speak but so much to reporters after watching his son get sentenced to prison but did say to reporters that it was an "extraordinarily difficult time."
The elder Jackson said last year when Jesse Jackson Jr. entered the hospital for bi-polar disorder that his family stands by him.
"We are with him and we hope that he'll be fully restored to his health," Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. told NBC Chicago’s Stefan Holt. "Right now he is going through a tremendous challenge."
