NEW ORLEANS — Former Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans was found guilty on Wednesday of accepting payoffs for city contracts, becoming the first mayor in the city’s history to be charged and convicted of corruption.
The jury, deliberated for about six and a half hours in total before finding Mr. Nagin, 57, the Democratic mayor for two terms and the face of the city’s leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, guilty in 20 of the 21 counts against him.
Tania Tetlow, a Tulane University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, said Mr. Nagin could receive a sentence of as many as 20 years under federal sentencing guidelines. He will remain free on bond until sentencing, but was placed on home detention.
After the verdict was read, Mr. Nagin stood at the defense table, his hands in his pockets; his wife wept as she sat in the front row of the gallery.
The verdict came after a seven-day trial, during which more than 30 witnesses testified, including some businessmen who had pleaded guilty to bribing Mr. Nagin in return for contracting work with the city. The most compelling days of the trial, and the ones that filled a courtroom that was half-empty most of the time, were those when Mr. Nagin himself took the stand, sparring with the prosecutor and dismissing the charges against him as misleading and misinformed.
