Roderick Wright’s sentencing for perjury, fraud postponed again

The sentencing of state Sen. Roderick D. Wright for felony perjury and voter fraud was postponed again Wednesday to give his attorneys time to prepare paperwork requesting a new trial.

Wright will return to court on Sept. 12, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said she would allow no more postponements.

“There is a lot of public interest in having this matter resolved,” Kennedy said, adding this would be “the last and final continuance.”

Wright, 62, a Democrat who represents an Inglewood-area district, was convicted in January on eight felony counts, including perjury and voting fraud.

Prosecutors said, and jurors agreed, that Wright had contrived to make it appear that he lived in a rental complex he owns in Inglewood in order to run for the area’s state Senate seat in 2008.

His true residence, or “domicile” under the state Elections Code, was a Baldwin Hills house outside of the district, prosecutors said. Candidates for state offices are required to live in the districts they seek to represent.

Wright said he believed he had taken the necessary steps to establish the Inglewood property as his domicile when he arranged to rent a bedroom in the unit occupied by a tenant he considered his stepmother.

But prosecutors offered evidence that the lawmaker had moved only a few personal belongings to Inglewood and spent most of his time before winning office at the Baldwin Hills house.

Wright, who faces possible expulsion from his post, was suspended with pay in March, along with two other Democratic state senators facing criminal charges, Leland Yee of San Francisco and Ronald S. Calderon of Montebello.

On Wednesday, Wright attorney Winston Kevin McKesson told the court another lawyer has taken the lead in preparing the documents seeking a new trial and needed more time. The defense had no objection to the postponement.

Wright and McKesson had no comment outside of the courtroom.

Twitter: @jeanmerl