Sentencing hearings in the “ComEd Four” bribery case involving former House Speaker Michael Madigan will be delayed until after the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in on a key federal bribery statute that has put several high-profile public corruption cases in limbo, a judge ruled Thursday.
Prosecutors had argued against the delay, saying defense attorneys were doing a premature victory lap and that there is a public interest in seeing the case through in a timely fashion.
In announcing his decision, however, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said it “makes sense to me to find out precisely” where the high court lands before proceeding to sentencing. He also quoted from the prosecutions’ opening statements at trial last year, which the judge said mirrored some of the exact issues in the Supreme Court filings.
Leinenweber’s ruling follows a similar decision by U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey, who agreed to postpone Madigan’s racketeering trial from April to October in order to have the Supreme Court’s decision in hand.
The case taken up by the Supreme Court involves James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, convicted of accepting $13,000 from a company that had recently won contracts to sell the city garbage trucks.
He was originally tried and convicted of one count of bribery and one tax-related offense in 2019, but successfully moved for a new trial on the bribery count. The jury convicted him again following a second trial in 2021.
The question in the case is whether the federal bribery statute criminalizes payments to public officials without a quid pro quo agreement under a section of the statute that bans “gratuities.” The Chicago-based 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has repeatedly said it does, including in Snyder’s case.
But other districts have seen it differently, and the split over that issue has now become “entrenched and intractable,” with courts refusing to reconsider their previous positions, Snyder’s appellate attorneys wrote in their Aug. 1 petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case.
“The battle lines are drawn, and only this court can break the logjam and restore uniformity on the meaning of an important federal criminal statute,” the petition stated. “Officials and citizens across the country should not be left guessing when the everyday hustle and bustle of local politics becomes a federal crime.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Snyder’s petition on April 15.
The ComEd Four were found guilty in May 2023 of bribery conspiracy and falsification of business records. The defendants were Michael McClain, a former ComEd contract lobbyist, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, ex-ComEd executive John Hooker and Jay Doherty, who worked as a lobbyist for ComEd for 30 years and served as president of the City Club of Chicago civic forum.
Sentencings had been set for January but were initially delayed due to Leinenweber’s health issues. In arguing for a stay until the Supreme Court decision, Scott Lassar, an attorney for Pramaggiore, said the cases will likely see major upheaval, arguing that jurors were allowed to find her and her co-defendants guilty of bribery without evidence of a quid pro quo.
“It is all but certain that there is at least going to be a retrial, if not an acquittal, for the defendants,” Lassar said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, who is spearheading the Madigan and ComEd prosecutions, suggested defense attorneys were prematurely spiking the football.
“I wish somebody would just read the language of the statute,” Bhachu told U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber in January.
In a written motion, Bhachu went even further, calling the effort to delay the sentencings another signal that the defendants are “unrepentant” and trying to shift blame.
“They are not the victims. The victims are the citizens of Illinois, who were deprived of their right to honest government as a result of defendants’ efforts to rig the legislative process by bribing Madigan,” Bhachu wrote.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
