"After years of service to my country, going the right way, I
made a very wrong turn. No man has ever been more sorry... Some say
I've lost everything. But, your Honor, you have no idea. I have
three children. I asked them to stay away. I didn't want them to go
through this spectacle."
Source: Vietnam War ace, "Top Gun" instructor,
and disgraced Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham, pleading with
Judge Larry A. Burns Friday for clemency at his sentencing on two
counts of bribery. Unswayed, Burns threw the book at Cunningham --
sentencing the former war hero to eight years and
four months in federal prison. It would have been ten years --
the maximum allowed under a previous plea bargaining -- but Burns
deducted time from that sentence in light of Cu