Abernathy returns to prison for 13 more months after parole revoked

ATLANTA - Former state Senator Ralph David Abernathy III will spend the next 13 months in prison after the state Board of Pardons and Paroles voted Monday to revoke his parole. <br> <br> The board found Abernathy guilty on five of the nine charges against him. Each guilty count was for violating a state law that prohibits anyone other than a licensed attorney from receiving fees to represent inmates. <br> <br> Abernathy was accused of taking $35,000 from two women under the pretense that he would work to get their loved ones out of prison. Abernathy never hired an attorney for the two women. <br> <br> He was in the Fulton County Jail Monday, awaiting transfer to a state prison. He will remain in prison until January 2004. <br> <br> Abernathy, the son and namesake of a confidant of the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, had been out of prison since May 2001 after serving about a year of his four-year prison sentence for theft. <br> <br> He was convicted in 2000 of falsifying legislative expense accounts and forging vouchers for state reimbursements for $5,700. He also was convicted of trying to influence a witness. <br> <br> The Parole Board said Abernathy called Melissa Kurz of Raleigh, North Carolina, three times in 2001 and asked for money to advocate for the release of Alecious Delon Robinson from prison. The board said he received $30,000 from Kurz. <br> <br> The board also found Abernathy received $5,000 from Alberta Smith of Bibb County to advocate for the release of her grandson, Quatrelles Lashon Norman, from prison. <br> <br> Abernathy served three terms in the state Senate until the 1998 elections, when he was barred from seeking re-election because his qualifying check bounced.

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