“Failed Murder Attempts: Lawyer’s Wife Survives Three Attacks”

Fred Wortman (Tennessee Department of Correction).

A Tennessee lawyer will remain behind bars over repeat efforts to kill his wife, a judge recently ruled in the Volunteer State.

Back in 2015, Fred Auston Wortman, III, who was 49 years old at the time, admitted to attempted murder and solicitation of murder against his then-wife. He made three attempts to kill her, but fortunately, he was unsuccessful each time, according to court documents.

The defendant was sentenced to spend 30 years in prison — with the possibility of parole after serving 30% of his time behind bars.

Despite the fact that Wortman was expected to serve nine years before being considered for parole, he was released early in 2019 after serving about four years of his sentence.

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In turn, the parole board denied his bid for early release — prompting a series of appeals that have continued on through this year.

As of January 2020, the offender challenged the parole board’s decision through an administrative appeal, which was promptly turned down. Subsequently, in February 2020, he initiated a lengthy legal process at the trial court level, presenting various legal arguments and seeking a review of the board’s ruling.

Throughout all of 2020 and into February 2021, in various motions, rejections, and appeals, Wortman went back and forth with the trial court and the parole board before eventually moving up the judicial ladder to the Court of Appeals of Tennessee in Nashville.

But the appeals court was not much help.

In November 2021, in a 21-page ruling, a three-judge panel rejected Wortman’s effort to alter or amend the trial court’s judgment.

“At his parole hearing, Wortman admitted guilt in the offenses to which he pled guilty,” a judge wrote. “Wortman, by his own admission, put poison into his wife’s toothpaste. This toothpaste was also used by his daughter. Wortman then tried multiple times to hire a hitman to have his wife killed. The severity of these offenses is evident.”

Wortman, for his part, largely steered clear of the facts in his 2021 appeal — arguing for early release based on a “risk assessment score” suggesting he was unlikely to violate the law if granted his liberty.

The appeals court dismissed this argument, at length:

[W]hile Wortman studiously avoids any substantive discussion in his appellate briefs about the crimes for which he pled guilty, we will not avoid the subject as it pertains directly to whether the Board had a sufficient evidentiary basis for its decision. To reiterate, Wortman acknowledged at his parole hearing that he tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife while he was incarcerated for trying to hire a hitman to kill his wife. We can well see how this information could rationally lead the Board to conclude that Wortman posed a substantial risk of nonconformance to conditions of release were he to be released given how determined he was to kill his wife including taking affirmative steps to do so even while incarcerated. In view of Wortman’s own description of his brazen conduct, and all of the other evidence presented at the parole hearing, the Board had a sufficient basis for its conclusion that there was a substantial risk Wortman would not conform to conditions of release, notwithstanding his risk assessment score.