By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a former mayor of an Indiana city convicted in a case in which he was accused of taking bribes, in a ruling that could make it more difficult for federal prosecutors to bring corruption cases against state and local officials.
The justices ruled 6-3 to reverse a lower court’s decision that had upheld former Portage Mayor James Snyder’s corruption conviction for taking $13,000 from a trucking company that collected more than $1 million during his time in office. of contracts had received.
The court’s conservative justices formed the majority in the judge’s ruling Brett Kavanaughwhile the Liberal members disagreed.
Federal prosecutors have accused Snyder of corruptly soliciting payment in connection with the government contracts, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A jury convicted him and a judge sentenced him to one year and nine months in prison.
“The question in this case is whether (federal law) makes it a crime for state and local officials to accept gratuities – for example, gift certificates, lunches, plaques, books, framed photographs and the like – that could be given as a token of appreciation . in appreciation after the official act,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The answer is no.”
In 2013, when Snyder was mayor, Portage awarded two contracts to local trucking company Great Lakes Peterbilt to purchase five garbage trucks, worth a total of about $1.1 million.
The following year, while Snyder was still in office, Peterbilt paid him $13,000, which Snyder said was a consulting fee for his work at the company. Kavanaugh wrote that Portage, a northwestern Indiana city of about 38,000 residents, apparently allows local government officials to seek outside work.
The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Snyder’s argument that the federal crime at issue prohibits bribery but not tipping. This prompted Snyder to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh wrote in the ruling Wednesday that the federal corruption law “leaves it up to state and local governments to regulate gratuities to state and local officials.”
Federal law, Kavanaugh wrote, “does not supplement these state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in prison for accepting even mundane tips.”
In a dissent written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s liberal justices expressed concern about how the ruling could undermine efforts to combat government corruption.
The administration has not used the statute as a dragnet against permissible conduct, but rather to prosecute serious cases involving “precisely the kind of palm-greasing that the statute clearly covers and that one might reasonably expect Congress to be concerned about when it addresses state, local, and tribal governments,” Jackson wrote.
“After today, however, there are doubts about the federal government’s ability to prosecute such clearly unlawful conduct,” Jackson added.
Last year, the court overturned the bribery conviction of an ex-aide to Democratic former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a ruling that also limited federal prosecutors’ ability to prosecute corruption cases.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
