The state attorney general's office dropped its remaining charge Thursday against former state Senate Democratic Leader Robert J. Mellow in the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission pay-to-play case.

In paperwork filed Thursday in Dauphin County Court, Senior Deputy Attorney General Susan L. DiGiacomo asked county Judge Richard A. Lewis to allow dismissal of the last charge, saying his ruling last week tossing out six of seven charges against Mellow damaged the prosecution's case.Given the judge's "well-reasoned" ruling and available and admissible evidence, senior prosecutors in the attorney general's office concluded they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mellow conspired to run a corrupt organization and commit commercial bribery and bid rigging, DiGiacomo wrote in a motion to drop the charge.Lewis approved the motion, leaving Mellow free of unresolved criminal charges for the first time since March 2013 when he was still in federal prison on unrelated charges and Attorney General Kathleen Kane charged him and others with corruption in the awarding of turnpike contracts.J.J. Abbott, Kane's assistant press secretary, said she would have no comment on the decision to drop the charge.Lawyers for Mellow had once suggested Kane had a political motive for prosecuting the senator because she almost ran against him for his Senate seat in 2010, but attorney Daniel T. Brier, Mellow's lead defense lawyer, said nothing like that after learning of the ruling."We were very happy with the decision of Judge Lewis to dismiss six of the seven counts based on the fact that there was no evidence to support them," Brier said. "And Kathleen Kane's decision today is very honorable because she and her senior prosecutors looked at the remaining count and they did the right thing when they said they could not make a case against Bob Mellow."He said Mellow has always believed himself innocent.Mellow and seven others were charged with various crimes in what Kane described as a pay-to-play case."Evidence of secret gifts of cash, travel, and entertainment, and the payment of substantial political contributions to public officials and political organizations, by two private turnpike vendors and their consultants, demonstrates that the turnpike operates under a pay-to-play system that is illegal and corrupt," Kane said when the charges were filed.Mellow was formally charged with single counts of running a corrupt organization; conspiracy to run a corrupt organization; commercial bribery; bid rigging; engaging in a conflict of interest and improperly accepting gifts and political contributions, both Ethics Act violations; conspiring to run a corrupt organization, bid rigging and commercial bribery; and failing to accurately report a campaign contribution by PNC Capital Markets on a campaign finance report.In his ruling dropping six of the seven charges last week, Judge Lewis ruled prosecutors lacked sufficient enough evidence to even bring Mellow to trial on them.The ruling means Mellow will remain a free man, faced only with regularly reporting to a federal probation officer until the expiration of his probation on the federal charge to which he pleaded guilty in May 2012.He pleaded guilty to conspiring to have Senate staff members do political campaign work and to file a false tax return that saved him about $16,000 in taxes.Federal Judge Joel Slomsky sentenced him to 16 months in prison and ordered him to serve three years of probation after his release. Mellow earned two months off for good behavior, served more than 10 of the 14 months in prison, about two months in a Scranton halfway house and the last month in home confinement.He declined to comment on Mellow's future plans or private life, but said the senator, who remarried while still in the halfway house, will continue to pursue reinstatement of his $138,958 annual state pension. The State Employees' Retirement System canceled it after he pleaded guilty to the federal charge. His appeal of that ruling was suspended after the state charges were filed, Brier said.Five of the original eight defendants in the turnpike case, including Mellow, have now had their cases resolved. Former commission Chairman Mitchell Rubin, former turnpike executive director Joseph Brimmeier and former chief operating officer George Hatalowich still face trial on their charges.