Saltillo ex-mayor files for citizenship restoration

Feb. 3– The same day former Saltillo mayor Larry Lowery officially resigned his position after the local election commission learned his citizenship had not been restored following felony drug convictions, he filed a petition to restore those rights.

Describing the matter as an oversight, Lowery stepped down Tuesday, but said, "Be it God’s will upon obtaining this document, I will again seek this office."

According to Lowery’s petition in Hardin County Circuit Court for restoration of citizenship, in November 1989 he pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of distribution of a Schedule II controlled substance. He then completed concurrent sentences of one year and one day, followed by three years probation.

Lowery’s attorney, Jay Reynolds of Savannah, said he contacted the U.S. District Court in Jackson and was advised a tornado had compromised many of the case files, possibly including Lowery’s.

 

Reynolds instead submitted a certificate of parole from the U.S. Parole Commission demonstrating Lowery had served his time.

The petition contends that in the years since his citizenship disqualification, Lowery has "sustained the character of a person of honesty, respectability, veracity, and is generally esteemed as such by the petitioner’s neighbors who have elected him to the offices of constable and mayor for the city of Saltillo."

The city’s board has named one of its aldermen, Carolyn Wood, as interim mayor pending a possible special election.