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GULFPORT -- A Gulfport father and son - one a former judge, the other a former jailer - are bound for prison for unrelated federal convictions. Their cases are considered Harrison County's most high-profile criminal cases in perhaps 20 years.
Both cases involve the power of authority and the public's trust: The father found guilty of taking bribes, the son found guilty five months later of violating rights under color of law and an inmate's death.
Friends of patriarch Wes Teel, a former Chancery Court judge, say the family's anguish is unimaginable. The longtime attorney, also a former prosecutor and municipal judge, must report to prison Dec. 27, convicted after a five-year investigation of judicial bribery and two trials.
Teel, 56, claims he was wrongfully convicted and plans to appeal, but the looming five-year sentence is the least of his concerns. The day he reports to prison is his 36th wedding anniversary. His wife, Myrna, a former school teacher, is in the debilitating stages of multiple sclerosis and Sjögren's Syndrome, a disease that dries up the body's organs, Teel said in an exclusive interview with the Sun Herald.
The Teel family's ordeals stretch beyond Wes Teel's dashed legal career and concerns for his wife's care. The couple's son faces a life prison sentence Nov. 1. He's been in custody since Aug. 16, after having been convicted of civil rights violations that include the fatal beating of Jessie Lee Williams Jr., a Harrison County jail inmate Teel assaulted in February 2006. Ryan Teel also was a key figure in the county's $3.5 million settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Williams' estate.
Wes Teel shied away from public comment after he learned he was to be tried a second time in the judicial bribery case. A federal jury in 2005 couldn't reach unanimous decisions on charges against Teel and two co-defendants, wealthy Coast attorney Paul Minor and former Circuit Judge John Whitfield. A jury in March found all three guilty. They were accused of giving or receiving money in exchange for favorable rulings and concealing the money trail.
Wes Teel agreed to talk with the Sun Herald last week. He shared his feelings over investigations that consumed five years of his life and discussed his faith in God despite his trials and tribulations.
'I feel like Job'
Wes Teel answered the telephone Wednesday when the Sun Herald called a Biloxi psychology clinic to talk with one of his longtime friends about the family's ordeal. Teel had closed his Gulfport law office before the bribery trial in March. A few days later, Dr. Simone Simone offered him a meager salary to work at her office, she said.
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