Hamilton sentenced to decade's disgrace

Phil Hamilton, once among the most powerful people in Virginia, will spend the next decade in a federal prison, the very definition of power corrupting absolutely.

Hamilton's sin was to use his position as a member of the House of Delegates to create a sinecure for himself at Old Dominion University. He was vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee when he helped find $500,000 to create a teacher training center at the school.

That the price tag for the 21-year veteran of the House was so relatively small ($40,000 a year for a part-time job as director of the center), makes the episode - in a way - especially disturbing.

"This is the toughest decision I've made in my 13 years as a judge," U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson said Friday in Richmond, according to the Daily Press. "What you have done is to corrupt the Virginia General Assembly. You have put a stain on the great deliberative body you were elected to serve in."

The former delegate was convicted May 11 of bribery and extortion, after a trial made it clear that he lobbied college officials for the job while he gathered the money. He was

the first delegate in decades to be convicted of a crime arising from his official duties.

Hamilton's transgression did more than implicate him, however. Still unresolved is who at ODU knew about the arrangement, and who approved it. Bribery requires a briber, and so far nobody from ODU has been charged.

The now-retired ODU dean of education, William Graves, testified that then-ODU President Roseann Runte ordered Hamilton's hiring. Runte, now president of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, denied it.

Graves and another ODU administrator received immunity from prosecution for their testimony against Hamilton.

The former delegate will have the next 9-1/2 years to contemplate the fact that he is - so far - the only person to be held accountable for what is clearly a two-party crime.