DiMasi lawyer says jailed pol has lost 45 pounds
Cancer-stricken former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi has lost 45 pounds behind bars since his 2011 corruption trial, his lawyer said as he prepares to argue today to have the ailing expol released from jail.
“Mr. DiMasi is unable to eat regular prison food and is for the most part limited to a liquid diet consisting of soft and pureed foods, thickened in some instances to avoid the danger of aspiration,” attorney Charles W. Rankin wrote yesterday.
Rankin and federal prosecutors will argue today for the 71-year-old DiMasi’s compassionate release from a federal prison in North Carolina two years ahead of his scheduled Nov. 17, 2018, release date.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf has asked both sides to submit DiMasi’s prison medical records that support their request. Both have asked to do so under seal.
Rankin tells Wolf the North End Democrat now weighs 178 pounds and is well on his way toward having to have a feeding tube surgically implanted.
He says previous episodes of aspiration suffered by DiMasi when food got into his lungs have left him hospitalized with pneumonia.
Rankin is also asking Wolf, should he agree to a compassionate release, that DiMasi not be subject to home detention, or if he is, for no longer than six months, because he poses no danger to the public and is not a risk to reoffend.
DiMasi was convicted in 2011 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.
He was sentenced to eight years, and shortly afterwards was diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer.