Karma delivers punishment even when prosecutors cannot

Maybe we better start calling him Kelvin “Karma” Ellis.

That’s about the only way to look at a guy 19 days shy of being a free bird, who decides to have a burger with his old buddy and newly minted felon Oliver W. Hamilton. Maybe the discussion on April 26 was about how to get along in the big house, or public contracting for fun and profit after doing a long stint.

Just so happened that an FBI agent wanted a tasty Hardee’s burger, too. Just so happened he choose the Caseyville Hardee’s where Ellis and Hamilton were noshing. Just so happened to be right at 1 p.m. that day

One click of the fibbie’s smartphone camera later, karma rains down upon Ellis. He was just sentenced by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Michael Reagan to another year in the federal pen for consorting with Hamilton and other known felons.

Ellis was running a prostitution ring out of East St. Louis City Hall. Ellis tried to have a hit man murder a witness. He bought votes. He took a public salary as the city’s regulatory affairs director but decided he didn’t need to pay income taxes.

Serving 10 years just didn’t seem to fit the amount of corruption that could be proven to rest on Ellis’s shoulders. So it seems the cosmos was sending him a message with just 19 days to go. How demoralizing to think you are done with a punishment, only to have it start again.

His lunch companion, Hamilton, also had a little karma delivered upon him when his different deals with the feds evaporated and Reagan went off the chart to put him away for five years. Hamilton was only convicted of stealing $40,000 from impoverished East St. Louis Township while supervisor, but he ran up $230,000 in questionable charges on a township American Express card.

Maybe karma’s not yet done with the lunchmates.

This story was originally published November 23, 2017 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Karma delivers punishment even when prosecutors cannot."