Federal Criminal Defense Blog : Georgia Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Gillen Withers & Lake Law Firm : White Collar Crime, RICO, Trial : Atlanta, Savannah, GA

As previously predicted here, we believe that the Supreme Court will declare the honest services statute unconstitutional. Apparently, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois thinks likewise.

In an apparent effort to head off any problems caused by the loss of the honest services mail fraud counts, the government has returned a Second Superseding Indictment against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In a filing yesterday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois explained that because the defendants’ conduct violated multiple criminal statutes, additional violations of the law are charged in the Second Superseding Indictment. The filing is in direct response to Blagojevich’s Motion to Dismiss the honest services mail and wire fraud counts,  and is fashioned in such a way that, should the Supreme Court find that the honest services mail and wire fraud statutes are unconstitutional, those charges can easily be dismissed, so as not to effect the trial of the case. The Blagojevich trial is scheduled for June 3.

All criminal practitioners should be filing similar motions to dismiss the honest services counts in any pending indictments.
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, was arraigned yesterday in Chicago on the 16 criminal charges pending against him. At arraignment the criminal defendant is brought before the court, advised of the charges against him and enters a formal plea of “not guilty.” An arraignment takes about 10 minutes, at most. The Chicago Tribune reports that Blago has not yet settled on criminal defense counsel and is trying to get access to his campaign funds so that he can retain counsel.

Other defendants, including Blagos former Chief of Staff, John Harris, are scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.

No doubt the discovery in this case will be voluminous and the government has indicated that it is turning over the first round of documents and recordings within two weeks.
 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

O.K., so remember you heard it here first – a new portmanteau word, the combining of two words into one, Blagojevich and blogosphere. All future posts dealing with the former Governor of Illinois will be known as the Blagosphere.

One curious thing we noticed about this indictment – it is captioned as a “Superseding Indictment,” or second indictment, but the Court’s docket does not show an earlier Indictment. The press release states, however, that the indictment supersedes one brought on October 30, 2008 against Defendant William Cellini alone for allegedly conspiring to obtain campaign funds for Blagojevich by shaking down an investment firm that was seeking an allocation of monies from the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS).

Here is our take on the indictment's honest services allegations: one of the Defendant’s, John Harris, Blagojevich’s former Chief of Staff, is charged with a single count of wire fraud, and is cooperating with the government. I can hear the tom toms beating and see the smoke on the horizon for Blagojevich. By the way, this guy is the definition of chutzpah, I even saw him on Letterman one night, and knowing he is going to be indicted any day, he apparently takes his family to Disney World, which I always thought you did after a victory.

Back to the indictment - it alleges a racketeering conspiracy from 2002 through the day before his arrest, December 8, 2008. As mentioned before, the racketeering enterprise is, the Office of the Governor of Illinois and Friends of Blagojevich, the fundraising vehicle for Blagojevich. The predicate offenses for the racketeering conspiracy are alleged to be mail fraud, wire fraud, Hobbs Act extortion (18 U.S.C. 1951) and bribery.

The indictment details an honest services mail fraud claim that brings together all of the factual allegations regarding Blagojevich's schemes.

They are: 

• That Blagojevich and others agreed that they would use the Governor's position with the State of Illinois for financial gain to be distributed after he left public office;
• That the defendants and others agreed to direct state business related to the refinancing of billions of dollars in Illinois Pension bonds to a company whose lobbyist agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to previously convicted co-schemer Tony Rezko, who would in turn, split the money with Blagojevich;

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks