question: By. Daily Mail Reporter. Last updated at 7:13 PM on 21st February 2012. A millionaire City lawyer jailed after hatching an elaborate kidnap story to escape a drink-drive charge has been freed just one month into his prison term as an 'act of mercy'. Francis Bridgeman, 43, drunkenly crashed his £50,000 Range Rover into a telegraph pole but tried to escape punishment by telling detectives he had been the victim of a kidnapping. However, after 200 hours of wasted police time and a court case in which he was jailed for a year for perverting the course of justice, Bridgeman was freed after one month as an act of mercy to his seriously ill wife. Rocky road: CCTV footage showed Bridgeman stumbling along a platform just before he said he had been kidnapped. The top lawyer had been originally convicted after Lewes Crown Court heard he crashed his car following a five-pint drinking session with a friend last April. His claim to police that he had been kidnapped unravelled. when CCTV footage showed him weaving drunkenly along a train platform at. London Bridge Station after a post-work pub binge, where he drank five. pints of Guinness with a friend. Today, after hearing of Bridgeman’s wife’s very serious illness, three senior judges quashed the sentence to allow him to go back home and care for her. Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, sitting with Lord Justice Toulson and Sir Christopher Holland, told the Court of Appeal that, but for his wife’s situation, the sentence would have been appropriate. Bridgeman was missing for some time after his car was found locked, with its air bag activated, on a verge in Shovers Green, Ticehurst, East Sussex, the judge said. When he returned home, he was questioned by police and gave an elaborate account of being kidnapped, hooded and then dumped in a field by his assailant. However, investigations revealed that he had been out drinking in London after work and was seen unsteady on his feet at London Bridge Station. A long walk home: Bridgeman walked for three hours back to his oasthouse in East Sussex. Tests showed he would have been over the limit when the smash occurred. Investigation of the air bag in his car, which would have been sealed, also revealed the presence of his DNA, suggesting he was behind the wheel when it crashed. Bridgeman continued to deny the lies in court, but by the time he was sentenced had accepted that he was guilty, the appeal judge continued. His legal team today argued that mercy should be afforded to allow the disgraced lawyer, who is now unemployed, to go back to his wife. (File picture) Bridgeman, 43, drunkenly crashed his £50,000 Range Rover Sport into a telegraph pole. Judge Guy Anthony had originally jailed Bridgeman for 12 months and told Lewes Crown. Court (pictured) the sentence would have been less if he hadn't spun his. web of lies. She is emotionally and physically dependant on her husband and her condition would make prison visits almost impossible, the court was told. 'Throughout her illness, the appellant has been his wife’s principle carer. He had taken extensive periods off work to care for her,' the appeal judge said. 'Having regard to all of the matters, we have come to the conclusion that, as an act of mercy in exceptional circumstances, this court should intervene. 'In doing so, we make it clear that we expressly disregard this appellant’s fall from grace. 'The court is able to take the course it takes today simply because of the extreme condition of the appellant’s wife.' The 12-month sentence was suspended for two years.

answer: Francis Bridgeman jailed for a year for perverting the course of justice. Millionaire lawyer freed after court hears he is principal carer to seriously ill wife.


question: A whistle-blowing Russian lawyer whose death in custody strained U.S.-Russia relations was posthumously convicted in a tax case in a Moscow district court Thursday, state-run legal news agency RAPSI reported. Sergei Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion -- a verdict that comes after he died in 2009 in a Moscow detention center. The United States alleges Magnitsky was beaten to death in detention, a claim that Russian authorities reject. Magnitsky's 2008 arrest and tax charges came after he uncovered Russia's largest known tax fraud in the form of rebates claimed by government officials who stole money from the state. The U.S. State Department believes Magnitsky was persecuted because he "was blowing the whistle of confiscation of private assets and misuse of private assets," a State Department official said in a background briefing with reporters earlier this year. U.S. lawmakers responded to Magnitsky's death by passing the December 2012 Magnitsky Act, a law that imposes visa bans on and freezes the assets of 16 Russian officials that U.S. officials allege were connected to his death, abuse or detention. Thursday's verdict prompted more criticism from U.S. officials. "The trial was a discredit to the efforts of those who continue to seek justice in his case," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "Despite widely publicized, credible evidence of criminal conduct resulting in Magnitsky's death, authorities have failed to prosecute those responsible. "We continue to call for full accountability for all those responsible for Magnitsky's wrongful death, and we'll continue to support the efforts of those in Russia who seek to hold those individuals accountable." Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday that Magnitsky's posthumous conviction "is nothing short of a message to Russia's activist community of the repercussions of opposing the state." Russia's lawmakers responded to the Magnitsky Act with their own list, slapping similar sanctions on 18 Americans it called rights violators. Russian President Vladimir Putin last year called the Magnitsky Act "another anti-Russian law" and an "imperialist approach to foreign policy." In December, Putin signed into law a measure that would ban the adoption of Russian children by U.S. families starting in 2014 -- a move also widely seen as retaliation for the Magnitsky Act. CNN's Elise Labott, Jason Hanna, Alla Eshchenko, Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.

answer:
NEW: The verdict draws criticism from U.S. officials. The conviction of Sergei Magnitsky comes nearly four years after this death. Magnitsky died in a Moscow jail in 2009; the U.S. alleges he was beaten to death. His death prompted the United States to freeze the assets of certain Russian officials.