(Newser) – Robert Allen Stanford, the Texas man accused of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, wants out of prison, saying that his incarceration ahead of his trial is a violation of his constitutional right to due process. Stanford, who has been "savagely beaten" while in prison, has been jailed for nearly a year and won't see his case head to trial until January. "When Mr. Stanford surrendered to authorities, he was a healthy 59-year-old man," his lawyer tells Reuters. Pre-trial incarceration has "reduced him to a wreck of a man."









"He has been so savagely beaten that he has lost all feeling in the right side of his face and has lost near-field vision in his right eye," continues his lawyer, who claims Stanford has neither the motive nor the money to skip town and should be instead placed under house arrest at his fiancee's sister's home. Last summer, the financier filed a motion for better air-conditioning in his cell. Click here for the latest on his case.

(Read more Ponzi scheme stories.)

