Prison-bound.(Whispers)

Little Rock attorney Barry Jewell has been ordered to report to federal prison by 2 p.m. on Monday--but not without every effort to keep him out by his never-say-die defense team of Sam Perroni and Shelly Hogan Koehler.

Jewell was convicted back in September of a single count of aiding and abetting tax evasion on behalf of a client, and he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $25,000. At the same trial, he was acquitted of conspiring with his former law partner, Keith Moser, to commit wire fraud.

Jewell has appealed his conviction, and his lawyers tried--hard--to keep him out of prison pending that appeal. Their motion succeeded in delaying his date with the Federal Bureau of Prisons by five weeks. Federal prosecutors objected, naturally, and U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes denied Jewell's motion in a detailed, 26-page opinion issued July 8.

Perroni and Koehler promptly filed another motion asking Holmes to reconsider. Jewell's primary argument is that Holmes erred in allowing the jury to see his videotaped deposition in an unrelated case, which prosecutors entered as evidence of the alleged conspiracy with Moser.

It didn't take Holmes much time or many pages to dispense with that.

"The court does not see how an appellate court could reverse the conviction on Count 5"--the tax evasion charge--"based on evidence that was admitted on Count 1 when the jury acquitted on Count 1," Holmes wrote in his two-page order issued Tuesday.

"Such a finding on appeal would require the Court to believe that the evidence had no impact on the jury's verdict on the [conspiracy] count on which it was offered but caused substantial unfair prejudice on a count on which it was not offered."

Besides which, Holmes wrote, "To grant Jewell's motion for reconsideration would require the Court to change its mind on the issue of whether the evidence [of tax evasion] was overwhelming, but that has not happened."

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