Tommy Burnett

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Associated Press) - Tommy Burnett, the former Tennessee House Majority Leader whose political career survived his first federal conviction but not his second, died Thursday. He was 67. His son, Fentress County General Sessions Judge Todd Burnett, told friends and family that his father died in a Nashville hospital, legislative and court officials said. The Jamestown Democrat was House majority leader when he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of failing to file his income taxes in 1982, a misdemeanor. Popular in his Cumberland Plateau district, he easily won re-election while serving a 10-month sentence. In 1990, he was convicted in the FBI's Rocky Top investigation of bingo parlor operators who took over the state charters of legitimate Tennessee charities to run illegal gambling operations. He was sentenced to five years in prison for setting up an illegal bingo hall in 1986 and was ordered to pay $48,000 in restitution to a former fellow inmate he had persuaded to become an investor. After his release from prison in 1992, Burnett worked as a car salesman, a regular on a Nashville radio talk show, a part-time investigator for the Tennessee Human Rights Commission and lobbyist for the Ingram Group.