Convicted swindler Patrick Dallas Graham suffered yet another rejection in his years-long efforts to get out of prison.
U. S. District Court Judge Gary Fenner rejected Graham's appeal June 6, saying he had no jurisdiction over Graham's case any more since Graham had already filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the same conviction and "was denied on its merits."
Fenner wrote, "This court is without jurisdiction to review a second or successive petition for writ of habeas corpus until authorized to do so by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Petition should present his claims regarding exhaustion and his alleged actual innocence to the Eighth Circuit."
The case was dismissed without prejudice.
This latest appeal was filed in May, less than a month ago after this blog reported that Graham, who was sentenced in 1997 to 15 years in prison for fleecing 500 investors in his company, Conquest Labs, out of more than $5 million, had the first habeas corpus petition rejected in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
Graham still has an action pending in Cole County Circuit Court.
Graham was convicted of fraud after bilking his investors, including pop singer Pat Boone, and the Herschend family, owners of Silver Dollar City in Branson, out of the money they invested in Conquest Labs, which Graham said was working on a vaccine to cure the AIDS virus, as well as other vaccines that would cure cancer and Alzheimer's Disease. In fact, no vaccines existed, and Graham was pouring the proceeds into his own pockets.
He was indicted by a Barton County grand jury in February 1996, following a May 23, 1995, raid of his office on the Lamar square.
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