Former Chattanooga City Councilman John P. “Duke” Franklin walked away a free man Friday after enduring for more than a year the prospect of going to prison for his participation in a large local cocaine ring.

“I am remorseful for everything that has happened,” Mr. Franklin told a federal judge shortly before being sentenced to three years of supervised probation. “I hopefully will not be here ever, ever again. This was definitely out of character for me.”

In the federal system where parole does not exist and probation almost never is an option because of current sentencing guidelines, the outcome of Mr. Franklin’s case was seen as a victory by his defense attorneys.

“Probation is still a rare thing,” defense attorney Leslie Cory said after U.S. District Judge Leon Jordan made his ruling.

Judge Jordan said he felt as though Mr. Franklin’s crime, which amounted to helping a friend make a fake loan document look legitimate, was “aberrant” and not likely to be repeated. He agreed that Mr. Franklin already had suffered embarrassment and would carry the label of “convicted felon” the rest of his life.

Mr. Franklin declined comment as he left U.S. District Court in Chattanooga on Friday afternoon with his wife and father by his side.

“Duke’s taken responsibility from the beginning. He’s moving forward, not backward,” defense attorney Marty Levitt said.

Staff Photo by Allison Kwesell Former City Councilman John P. "Duke" Franklin, left, leaves the Federal Courthouse in Chattanooga with his father, a former city commissioner and vice mayor, John P. Franklin, right. A federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation for his role last year in a large cocaine ring.

Mr. Franklin’s actions in March 2008 in which he arranged for a fraudulent loan document to be notarized were characterized by his attorneys as “minor” compared with that of about 40 others who had been arrested later that May for participating in a large drug ring. The ring was responsible for funneling more than 60 pounds of cocaine a month into Chattanooga, authorities said.

But federal authorities apparently saw it differently, charging Mr. Franklin at first with the serious crime of money laundering because the loan document had been used by his friend Michael Kelley to conceal $70,000 in drug money.

When Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty last November only to conspiring to obstruct justice, he avoided a possible prison sentence of up to 20 years, and documents recently submitted to the court were designed to convince Judge Jordan that the “help” he gave Mr. Kelley did not warrant incarceration.

On Friday during Mr. Franklin’s sentencing hearing, in which he could have received 16 months in prison according to federal sentencing guidelines, defense attorney Cornel Williams again emphasized the humiliation Mr. Franklin has gone through because of his public figure status at the time of his arrest. Mr. Franklin resigned from his City Council position on June 3, 2008, just two weeks after the drug roundup.

Mr. Williams said that despite what Mr. Franklin did — he never was charged with an actual drug crime — the former councilman nevertheless has “suffered embarrassment beyond anything anyone else in this case would ever see.”

Mr. Williams also expressed regret that the defense team did not file the documents under seal that were meant to aid Judge Jordan in his sentencing ruling. In those documents, Mr. Franklin admitted to being a being a full-blown cocaine addict while serving on the City Council and said his drug habit was the result of financial and professional pressures.

“Now that document is on the Internet forever,” Mr. Williams said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Winne did not oppose the defense’s plea for probation. Mr. Winne, in fact, commended Mr. Franklin for being “honest” at the time of his arrest. The information Mr. Franklin provided to the government, Mr. Winne added, was “very helpful’ in other investigations and would have been revealed at Mr. Kelley’s trial had Mr. Kelley not chosen to plead guilty.

“We ask the court to give Mr. Franklin every consideration,” Mr. Winne told Judge Jordan.