John Grosvenor Rowland (born May 24, 1957) is a former American politician and political commentator.
He was the 86th Governor of Connecticut from 1995 to 2004; he is a member of the Republican Party. He is married to Patty Rowland, his second wife, and the couple have five children between them. In 2004, Rowland resigned from office during a corruption investigation, and later pleaded guilty in federal court to a one-count indictment for conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, mail fraud and tax fraud.[1][2] He was the first Connecticut governor to be elected to three terms since 1784.
He served ten months in a federal prison until February 10, 2006, followed by four months house arrest at his home in West Hartford, Connecticut, until June 2006. His lieutenant governor, M. Jodi Rell, replaced him as governor.
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In the first year of Rowland's third term (2003), rumors began circulating that contractors doing business with the state paid for and made improvements to his weekend home, that he benefited improperly from the sale of a condominium in Washington, D.C. at an inflated price, that he took bribes from subordinates in state government, and that he took partial ownership in businesses immediately before they were granted state contracts. These eventually led to federal investigations and then indictments of some of Rowland's close aides, who then cooperated with federal investigators.
Rumors continued that the investigation was building a case against Rowland himself; Rowland publicly denied the allegations.
However, in December 2003, Rowland abruptly appeared on television and admitted that work had been done by contractors on his vacation home at no charge, and that his earlier statements to the contrary were untrue. Matters were exacerbated when his wife, Patty Rowland, wrote a satirical poem deriding the media for investigating her husband's wrongdoing.[9]
He claimed that, since the work was done, he had paid the contractors in full; but in January 2004 an official investigation began into charges of corruption and whether he should face impeachment.
On June 18, the Connecticut Supreme Court required Rowland to appear before the investigative panel seeking his testimony, which could have resulted in him giving evidence against impeachment in the ongoing criminal investigation. On June 21, Rowland's lawyers announced that he would resign. The resignation went into effect at noon on July 1, 2004.
On December 23, 2004, Rowland pleaded guilty to depriving the public of honest service. Rowland was sentenced on March 18, 2005, in New Haven, Connecticut, to one year and one day in prison, four months house arrest, three years probation and community service. On April 1, 2005, he entered Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto, in Pennsylvania. His federal inmate number was 15623-014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Rowland
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