A Tennessee lawyer will remain behind bars over repeat efforts to kill his wife, a judge recently ruled in the Volunteer State.

In 2015, Fred Auston Wortman, III, then 49 years old, admitted guilt to multiple charges, including first-degree attempted murder and solicitation of murder, after several failed attempts to kill his wife at the time, according to court documents.

The defendant was sentenced to spend 30 years in prison — with the possibility of parole after serving 30% of his time behind bars.

Although his sentence suggested Wortman should serve nine years before being eligible for parole, he was unexpectedly granted parole in 2019 after spending just about four years in prison.

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In turn, the parole board denied his bid for early release — prompting a series of appeals that have continued on through this year.

In January 2020, Wortman challenged the board’s parole decision through an administrative appeal, which was swiftly denied. Following this, in February 2020, he initiated lengthy legal proceedings at the trial court, arguing multiple points and seeking a review of the denial.

Throughout all of 2020 and into February 2021, in various motions, rejections, and appeals, Wortman went back and forth with the trial court and the parole board before eventually moving up the judicial ladder to the Court of Appeals of Tennessee in Nashville.

But the appeals court was not much help.

In November 2021, in a 21-page ruling, a three-judge panel rejected Wortman’s effort to alter or amend the trial court’s judgment.

“At his parole hearing, Wortman admitted guilt in the offenses to which he pled guilty,” a judge wrote. “Wortman, by his own admission, put poison into his wife’s toothpaste. This toothpaste was also used by his daughter. Wortman then tried multiple times to hire a hitman to have his wife killed. The severity of these offenses is evident.”

Wortman, for his part, largely steered clear of the facts in his 2021 appeal — arguing for early release based on a “risk assessment score” suggesting he was unlikely to violate the law if granted his liberty.

The appeals court dismissed this argument, at length:

[W]hile Wortman studiously avoids any substantive discussion in his appellate briefs about the crimes for which he pled guilty, we will not avoid the subject as it pertains directly to whether the Board had a sufficient evidentiary basis for its decision. To reiterate, Wortman acknowledged at his parole hearing that he tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife while he was incarcerated for trying to hire a hitman to kill his wife. We can well see how this information could rationally lead the Board to conclude that Wortman posed a substantial risk of nonconformance to conditions of release were he to be released given how determined he was to kill his wife including taking affirmative steps to do so even while incarcerated. In view of Wortman’s own description of his brazen conduct, and all of the other evidence presented at the parole hearing, the Board had a sufficient basis for its conclusion that there was a substantial risk Wortman would not conform to conditions of release, notwithstanding his risk assessment score.