State legislature Ford was able to use his family's deep roots in Memphis to garner support within the affluent black community for his first run for office. He was a delegate to Democratic State Convention and to the quadrennial
Democratic National Conventions from 1972 through 1996. Ford was charged in 18 counts of conspiracy and fraud accusing him of receiving nearly $1.5 million in loans from 1976 to 1983, that prosecutors alleged were actually bribes. Ford contended that the loans were legitimate business transactions used to extend loans to him and his family funeral home business. A first trial in Memphis in 1990 ended in a mistrial with the
jury deadlocked 8-4 along straight racial lines. The eight black jury members voted to acquit, and the four whites voted to convict. The judge granted the prosecutor's motion for retrial, and held that an impartial jury could not be found in Ford's hometown, the heavily
Democratic and predominantly black city of
Memphis where Ford was very popular. He ordered that the jury for the retrial be selected for a pool of jurors living 80 miles from Memphis in 17 heavily Republican and predominantly white
rural counties. The jurors were to be bused into Memphis for the trial. Ford appealed this jury selection plan twice to the
Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the ground that it violated his constitutional right to a jury of his peers; the appeals were denied twice. In 1993, Stuart Gerson, a hold-over
Bush-appointee serving as acting
Attorney General sided with Ford's request for a jury from Memphis, but the federal judge hearing the trial rejected the request. On April 9, 1993, a jury of 11 whites and 1 black acquitted Ford of all charges. During the seven year pendentcy of the criminal charges, Ford remained a U.S. Representative, but was stripped by Congress of his committee leadership roles. After his acquittal they were restored. In 1992, he had also been implicated in the
House banking scandal. == Later career ==