Don Siegelman

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was released on bond from a federal prison Friday, saying he remains upbeat despite serving nine months for corruption. Leaving the prison in a black sport utility vehicle, he stopped on a road outside the lockup to comment. He wore a ragged shirt that appeared to be prison clothing. "I may have lost my freedom for a while, but I never lost faith," Siegelman, 62, told reporters.

As Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, goes before a federal judge today to fight a recommended 30-year prison sentence, he's telling anyone who'll listen that his prosecution was engineered by White House strategist Karl Rove. It may be a long shot as a legal argument, but at least one influential Republican and a number of Democrats are questioning whether politics may have played a role in the case.

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison and former HealthSouth Chief Executive Richard Scrushy got nearly seven years Thursday in a bribery and corruption case that the judge said damaged public trust in state government. Siegelman was ordered to pay a fine of $50,000, plus $181,325 to a state agency where prosecutors said kickbacks were made.

Don Siegelman, a Democrat who served as governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003, was sentenced Thursday in Montgomery, Ala., to more than seven years in prison and fined $50,000. He was convicted of bribery and obstruction of justice last year in a trial that he said was engineered by Bush administration officials who wanted to eliminate him as a threat to Republican dominance in the South. U.S.

Forty-four former state attorneys general have sent a petition to Congress asking legislators to investigate the Justice Department's prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges. "We urge the Congress to take immediate action to investigate this entire matter so that the public may be assured that the outcome is just," the former officials wrote in a letter sent Friday to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

Former Gov. Don Siegelman pleaded not guilty in Montgomery in a political corruption case, saying he will be "proven totally innocent." A federal grand jury indicted Siegelman and two former Cabinet members along with HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy in what prosecutors described as "a widespread racketeering conspiracy."