Cancer-stricken former House Speaker Salvatore ?DiMasi’s attorney will argue before the state’s top justices next month DiMasi is owed more than $127,000 in pension payments “wrongfully withheld” from his family since his conviction on corruption charges more than four years ago.
DiMasi, 70, is serving an eight-year sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ cancer treatment center in North Carolina, where he is scheduled to remain until late 2018 — and where his long-standing lawyer Thomas R. Kiley told the Herald yesterday the North End Democrat is classified as a Level 4, what Kiley called “the highest grade of concern” for an inmate’s health.
DiMasi’s hearing before the state Supreme Judicial Court is set for Feb. 9. He will not attend. The state Retirement Board’s response to Kiley’s argument is due before the court no later than Thursday.
DiMasi’s 2011 conviction on conspiracy, fraud and extortion charges in connection with two multimillion-dollar software contracts that prosecutors said he received $65,000 in bribes and kickbacks to push on the state cost him his monthly $4,952 state retirement. However, Kiley will argue DiMasi’s conviction did not become final until Jan. 27, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up his appeal.
The board counters his conviction was final Sept. 9, 2011, when he was sentenced. DiMasi moved to resolve the dispute in Boston Municipal Court, but on April 17, 2014, Judge Eleanor C. Sinnott sided with the board.
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