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	Supreme Court Won't Hear Appeal in Patronage Fraud Case By David G. Savage Los Angeles Times February 23, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-supreme-court-fraud24-2009feb24,0,562266.story Aides to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley were convicted of 'honest services fraud' in awarding city jobs based on political connections. Justice Antonin Scalia dissents, calling the law too vague. Reporting from Washington -- Over a strong dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court refused today to hear an appeal from three former aides of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley who were prosecuted and sent to prison for conspiring to steer city jobs to campaign workers. Lawyers for Robert Sorich, Timothy McCarthy and Patrick Slattery questioned whether patronage hiring amounted to a federal crime. They were convicted of "honest services fraud" and they argued in their appeal the law was hazy and open-ended. Only Scalia voiced a dissent, however. "Carried to its logical conclusion," he wrote, it "would seemingly cover a salaried employee's phoning in sick to go to a ball game," he said. Sorich, who came from the Daley family's Bridgeport neighborhood, was an assistant director of the mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs from 1993 to 2005. He was often referred to as the "patronage chief." Federal prosecutors say he and his co-defendants used their posts to dispense thousands of jobs to those with political connections, and that they shredded documents and erased computers when an investigation began. Neither federal nor state law forbids city officials from hiring or promoting public employees based on political connections. But the city of Chicago had agreed in two federal consent orders, known as the Shakman decrees, to neither punish nor promote city employees because of their political connections, except for those who held policy-making positions. Prosecutors said these consent decrees put city officials on notice that they could not give a hiring preference to campaign workers. Last year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions and said Sorich and his co-defendants were guilty of defrauding the people of Chicago by running "an illegitimate shadow hiring scheme" out of City Hall. But the Sorich case also put a spotlight on the broad reach of the anti-corruption law. Twenty years ago, Congress expanded the reach of the anti-fraud laws by making it a crime to "deprive another of the intangible right of honest services." Normally, fraud involves a deceptive scheme to cheat someone of money or property. The new law removed the need to prove that a public official had cheated the taxpayers for his own benefit. It opened the door to prosecutions of public officials, corporate executives and union leaders for violating a duty of trust. In the past decade, prosecutors have increasingly relied on "honest services" charges. Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was convicted of honest services fraud, as was former Canadian newspaper executive Conrad Black. Lawyers for Black petitioned the Supreme Court in January. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are also reported to being considering prosecuting Cardinal Roger Mahony for "honest services fraud" as a result of the scandal involving priests who abused minors. In his dissent, Scalia said "this expansive phrase invites abuse by headline-grabbing prosecutors in pursuit of local officials, state legislators and corporate CEOs who engage in any manner of unappealing or ethically questionable conduct." He said the court should have heard Sorich's appeal and clarified the reach of the law. "It is simply not fair to prosecute someone for a crime that has not been defined until the judicial decision that sends him to jail," he wrote.
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