Former Indiana mayor leaves US prison after bribe conviction

A former eastern Indiana mayor has been released from a federal prison with more than six months remaining on his one-year term after pleading guilty to taking a bribe.

Dennis Tyler, Muncie’s mayor from 2012 through 2019, was released Thursday from the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia. He began serving a one-year sentence there last December.

Tyler was transferred to community confinement overseen by the Bureau of Prisons’ St. Louis Residential Reentry Management Office, the bureau said.

Community confinement means the inmate is in either home confinement or a residential reentry center, also known as a halfway house.

Tyler’s projected date of release from federal custody is Oct. 14.

Tyler reached an agreement with federal prosecutors in May 2021 to plead guilty to one count of theft of government funds.

Prosecutors alleged Tyler in December 2015 had accepted a $5,000 payment delivered by a Muncie Sanitary District official from a contractor who had been awarded more than $250,000 in improper city contracts for excavation and demolition work.

Tyler is one of nine people including government employees and contractors to face criminal charges as a result a years-long federal investigation of corruption in his administration and the sanitary district.