Geddings works at not feeling bitter

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 30, 2010

CHARLOTTE

Former North Carolina lottery commissioner Kevin Geddings said he works hard not to feel bitter about his conviction on felony charges four years ago now that he has been exonerated.

Geddings' 2006 fraud conviction was vacated on Friday, and a federal judge ordered the government to repay his $25,000 fine.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court had narrowed the scope of the law Geddings was charged with breaking, meaning the law no longer applied to what he did. He was released from federal prison a week later and exonerated on Friday.

"It's the first day in a number of years I didn't wake up as a felon, so it's a good feeling," Geddings told The Charlotte Observer on Saturday.

But, he said, his life has been ruined by the ordeal.

"It's been a nightmare for the last five years," Geddings said. "I lost my marriage ... my reputation (and) my business. Certainly it's been the hardest time of my adult life."

Geddings had been chief of staff to South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges and had a successful consulting business when he was appointed by then-N.C. House Speaker Jim Black to run the state's fledgling lottery in 2005.

He resigned weeks later after reports that a lottery company had paid him thousands in the years before his appointment. Then in 2006, he was convicted of honest services mail fraud for not disclosing his financial ties to Scientific Games, which was expected to bid for North Carolina's lottery business.

Geddings went to prison in July 2007, days before Black was sentenced on corruption charges and sent to the same prison.

Geddings admitted he made mistakes by not fully disclosing the money on ethics forms. "But I never committed a felony," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed and said the law he was prosecuted under applied to people taking kickbacks, not possible conflicts of interest.