SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) -- Bob Mellow, the one-time top Democrat in the Pennsylvania state Senate, must report by Friday afternoon to a federal prison camp in South Carolina to serve a 16-month term stemming from a corruption case against him, the Times-Tribune newspaper of Scranton reported.
The federal Bureau of Prisons designated the Williamsburg, S.C., facility for Mellow, said Martin J. Pane, U.S. marshal for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Judge Joel H. Slomsky issued a court order Tuesday giving Mellow until 2 p.m. on Friday to report.
The minimum-security satellite camp is next to the medium-security Williamsburg prison. Prison camp inmates typically serve as maintenance and cleanup staff for nearby higher-security prisons, Pane told the Times-Tribune.
Mellow, 70, retired in 2010 after a four-decade Senate career representing Lackawanna County.
At his Nov. 30 sentencing, Mellow's lawyer asked that Mellow be allowed to serve his sentence at the federal prison in Wayne County in northeastern Pennsylvania to be close to his daughter. She suffers from various ailments, including a form of muscular dystrophy that "has advanced to an end stage," his lawyer told the judge.
Mellow pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Prosecutors say his staff worked on taxpayer-paid time on a range of political campaign activities in 2006.
He was the Democrats' floor leader for most of the last two decades he was in office and his portrait hangs in the state Capitol because he briefly served as the Senate's president pro tempore in the 1990s.
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Information from: The Times-Tribune, http://thetimes-tribune.com/
