 Pearson's accomplice, former Exide chief executive Arthur M. Hawkins, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay a $1 million fine.The two were convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a huge scheme to sell defective Exide batteries to Sears for its Die-hard battery line.In 2008, it was reported that Exide was emitting two times the number of pollutants allowed into the environment at their secondary lead-acid battery smelter plant in Bristol, Tennessee.