NWA editorial: The verdict is in | NWADG:
"Nov. 7, 2015, just a few days before the filing deadline for candidates seeking a spot in the next year's election. Woods had served as a state representative from Springdale from 2007 to 2013 then as state senator from 2013 to 2017. He loved the role and appeared to embrace it practically as a full-time job. His 2015 announcement that he wouldn't seek re-election shocked the political world of Northwest Arkansas. And thus began the questions about why.
The private unraveling had begun a couple of years earlier as Woods orchestrated the allocation of state government General Improvement Fund money to Ecclesia College in Springdale and a nascent nonprofit conceived by an associate. On Thursday, a federal court jury convicted Woods of 15 charges tied to public corruption in the form of kickbacks -- an elected official receiving payment in exchange for using his influence to send taxpayer money to the tiny, private Christian college and his buddy's creation, AmeriWorks. That friend, Milton "Rusty" Cranford, sits in a Missouri jail, awaiting his on trial for public corruption on unrelated charges.
The same jury that convicted Woods also found Randell Shelton Jr. of Kemp, Texas, guilty of 12 charges. He's a consultant/lobbyist who stood accused of being the middle man in arranging the payments from the college to Woods and another Republican state lawmaker, former Rep. Micah Neal of Springdale. Neal pleaded guilty more than a year ago for his part in the schemes and cooperated with prosecutors.
A fourth man charged, Ecclesia College president Oren Paris III, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy on the eve of the trial and agreed to work with prosecutors. None of the men have been sentenced.
It is beyond the space we have available today to detail the 32 charges on which Woods and Shelton were indicted. "
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