Wal-Mart executive among those losing in Eighth Circuit

As detailed in this local story and this Bloomberg coverage, the Eighth Circuit’s reversal yesterday of many below-guideline sentences (details here) included the sentence of a prominent white-collar offender:

Thomas M. Coughlin, the former Wal-Mart Stores executive convicted of stealing from the company, may have to go to prison after an appeals court ruling that his house-arrest sentence was too lenient.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis yesterday tossed out a trial judge’s sentence of Coughlin, 58, to 27 months of house arrest.  Coughlin did not prove that he was too sick to go to prison, the court said. “The district court clearly erred in finding Coughlin suffers an extraordinary physical impairment and abused its discretion,” the panel said in a 2 to 1 ruling.  The case was returned to the trial court for resentencing.