Back to blogging after taking a several month hiatus in the run up to the successful defense of a criminal defense lawyer in Columbus, Georgia.
As predicted in this post in April, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the convictions of Paul Minor, a former Mississippi plaintiff’s lawyer, and two Mississippi state court judges, Wes Teel and John Whitfield, except for the “devil statute” charges, 18 U.S.C. § 666 (actually, federal program bribery). The opinion is here.
The tortured history of the case began with an indictment in 2003 centering around campaign loans that Minor made to judges Teel and Whitfield ostensibly in return for favorable treatment in Minor’s cases before their courts. The first trial in 2005 ended in the acquittal of one judge, Oliver Diaz, not guilty verdicts on several counts as to Minor, one not guilty verdict as to Teel, and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the remaining counts, including honest services mail fraud, program bribery and RICO.
A second trial began in 2007 and the defendants were convicted of honest services mail fraud, federal program bribery and Minor was convicted of RICO.
In reversing the federal program bribery convictions, the Court found that although the Mississippi State Court Judges were agents of the Mississippi Administrative Office of the Courts, “[a]s a fundamental matter, Whitfield and Teel’s role in presiding over Marks and Peoples Bank involved the judicial business of the Mississippi courts,” but had no connection with their roles as presiding judges in the cases before them. See pages, 20-22.
Now, an interesting issue as this case moves forward, will be whether Minor and his co-defendants properly preserved any error related to the constitutionality of the honest services counts. (As an aside, the RICO predicates were the 666 charges (now out) and the honest services charges (still viable)). As I see it, the only issue Minor raised regarding the honest services charges relates to whether the district court was required to charge the jury that it needed to find a quid pro quo. See pages, 22-23.
Therefore, Minor may not be able to take advantage of the fact that I see the Supreme Court holding within the near future that 1346 honest services mail and wire fraud law is unconstitutionally vague.