Ex-SCLC head Trammell to get out of prison

He’s to be released from Pickaway Correctional on Sunday

The Rev. Raleigh Trammell, the former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who was sent to prison in 2012 for stealing taxpayer money intended for the poor, is to be released Sunday.

According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, Trammell has served one year and six months at the Pickaway Correctional Institution.

He was admitted on Oct. 24, 2013, on a single count of theft and 25 counts of tampering with records.

Trammell, 78, was convicted in June 2012 on 51 felony counts accusing him of stealing public funds from a program geared to provide home-delivered meals to needy shut-ins. The program was operated from the headquarters of the SCLC Dayton chapter. Several of those counts were merged for the purposes of sentencing.

In September 2012, he was released from prison temporarily by the Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals, which ruled that he could be out of prison while his appeal was being decided.

His attorneys had argued that Trammell and the Dayton chapter of the SCLC, were guilty of nothing more than accounting errors. That court ultimately denied Trammell’s appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of that decision, and he was admitted to prison in October 2013.

A Montgomery County grand jury indicted Trammell on the charges for which he was ultimately convicted after a Dayton Daily News investigation found that his program claimed to provide meals to people who were not being served, including a trustee of Trammell’s church who was living at the Dayton Veterans Affairs Medical Center nursing home, and that trustee’s wife.

Trammell, in addition to be the former national and Dayton chapter chairman of the SCLC, is pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Jefferson Twp.

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