James Traficant | Convicted congressman

James Traficant, 73, an iconoclastic nine-term Ohio Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives who was convicted on corruption charges in 2002 and became the second member of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War, died Saturday at a hospital in Youngstown from injuries suffered in a farm accident.

The ex-congressman was seriously injured Tuesday after a vintage tractor flipped over on him on his farm near Greenford, Ohio, on Tuesday. A former aide told reporters in Ohio that Mr. Traficant apparently had a heart attack while driving the tractor, which overturned inside a building and left him trapped underneath.

Mr. Traficant, a maverick who found his own path politically and seemingly in everything else, was one of the most deliberately outrageous members of Congress in history. Glib and voluble, he was known for wearing cowboy boots, skinny ties, and out-of-date polyester suits - and for a bouffant mound of hair that seemed to defy gravity.

The Democrat's expulsion from Congress in 2002 came three months after a federal jury in Cleveland convicted him. Prosecutors said he used his office to extract bribes from businesspeople and coerced staffers to work on his farm and his houseboat on the Potomac River in Washington. He also was charged with witness tampering, destroying evidence and filing false tax returns. He spent seven years in prison.

- Inquirer wire services