Tennessee — A Tennessee lawyer will remain in prison despite repeated attempts to murder his wife, a judge ruled recently in the Volunteer State.
Fred Auston Wortman, III, 49, pleaded guilty in 2015 to three counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of solicitation of first-degree murder after attempting and failing to kill his then-wife on three separate occasions, according to court records.
The defendant was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after serving 30% of that time.
While the leniency math suggests Wortman should have served nine years before being eligible for parole, he was granted an early parole date in 2019 after only serving four years of his sentence.
In response, the parole board denied his request for early release, sparking a series of appeals that have continued this year.
In January 2020, the defendant filed an administrative appeal of the board’s decision, which was promptly denied. Then, in February 2020, he began long-running court proceedings at the trial court level, asserting numerous causes of action and seeking a review of the denial.
Wortman went back and forth with the trial court and the parole board throughout 2020 and into February 2021, filing various motions, rejections, and appeals before eventually moving up the judicial ladder to the Court of Appeals of Tennessee in Nashville.
However, the appeals court was not much help.
In a 21-page decision issued in November 2021, a three-judge panel denied Wortman’s request to alter or amend the trial court’s judgment.
“At his parole hearing, Wortman admitted guilt in the offenses to which he pled guilty,” the court’s ruling states. “Wortman admitted to putting poison in his wife’s toothpaste.” His daughter also used this toothpaste. Wortman then tried several times to hire a hitman to murder his wife. The gravity of these offenses is clear.
Wortman, for his part, largely avoided the facts in his 2021 appeal, arguing for early release based on a “risk assessment score” that indicated he was unlikely to violate the law if granted his liberty.
The appeals court rejected 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.
Undeterred, Wortman tried his luck again, filing a motion for post-conviction relief on the grounds that he did not fully understand the terms of his plea agreement.
He specifically complained because the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office argued against his early release, and he believed the DA’s office should not have been able to do so.
Again, the motion was referred back and forth between courts before being accepted on the merits by the Court of Criminal Appeals, which remanded a lower court to hear the defendant’s arguments.
In March 2025, the trial court heard the defense’s post-conviction arguments, which the DA’s office again rejected.
Last week, the judge confirmed Wortman’s sentence.
According to Tennessee prison records, the defendant is currently scheduled for another parole hearing in September 2026. His sentence is scheduled to be completed by August 2040.
