In a Tradition

Williams gets the maximum

Teamsters President Roy L. Williams, suffering from emphysema, waited attentively last week in Chicago's U.S. District Court to be sentenced for his part in a bungled conspiracy to bribe then Senator Howard W. Cannon of Nevada. If anyone was moved by his illness, it was not U.S. District Judge Prentice H. Marshall, who slapped Williams, 68, with a provisional maximum sentence: 55 years in prison and a fine of $29,000.

Williams and four co-defendants were found guilty on Dec. 15 of conspiring to bribe Cannon by offering him choice Teamsters-owned property in Las Vegas at a $200,000 discount in return for the Senator's help in scuttling a trucking-deregulation bill. Williams will undergo medical tests at a federal prison in Springfield, Mo., that could lighten his sentence. He is the third president of the 1.9 million-member union to receive a prison sentence in a criminal case in the past 25 years. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.