Supreme Court to Hear Former Indiana Mayor’s Bribery Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 30, 2023. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Supreme Court agreed on Dec. 13 to take up the appeal of James Snyder, the former mayor of an Indiana town who was convicted of bribery.

The case comes as the court has been raising the bar in public corruption prosecutions in recent years. The court has been willing to overturn corruption convictions that involve public officials doing things that some think of as normal political activities.

In 2016, the Supreme Court vacated the conviction of the former Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, for taking gifts from a benefactor without actually taking action to benefit that person.

In 2020, the court overturned the convictions of two former political operatives who, as allies of then-Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, closed lanes at a toll plaza to part of the George Washington Bridge—the “Bridgegate” traffic-congestion scandal—in 2013. The operatives altered the traffic pattern on lanes leading to the bridge as payback to the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, for not supporting Mr. Christie’s reelection campaign.

The court determined in the case, Kelly v. United States, that even though the officials’ action constituted an “abuse of power,” they didn’t run afoul of federal law because the “scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property.”

In May, the court overturned the public corruption conviction of Joe Percoco, formerly an aide to then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Mr. Percoco had been executive deputy secretary in the governor’s office but, at the time of the payments that the federal government characterized as bribes, had temporarily stepped down from the position to run Mr. Cuomo’s reelection campaign.

Mr. Percoco argued he shouldn’t have been convicted for taking payments to influence government policy because, at the relevant time, he was merely a lobbyist who held only informal influence over government decision-making. In other words, Mr. Percoco said that because he wasn’t a government official at the time he accepted the funds, no corruption was involved.

In the case at hand, Mr. Snyder, a Republican who was mayor of Portage, Indiana, a small town on Lake Michigan, was convicted by a federal jury in Hammond, Indiana, on March 19, 2021, on a bribery charge for soliciting and accepting $13,000 from a business that took in more than $1.1 million in city contracts. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

He also was convicted of defrauding the IRS. A jury found him not guilty on a separate bribery charge related to a tow truck contract.

The court granted the petition for certiorari, or review, in Snyder v. United States, in an unsigned order on Dec. 13. No justices dissented. The court didn’t explain its decision. At least four of the nine justices have to vote to grant the petition for it to move forward to the oral argument stage.

Section 666

The appeal is against a June ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit that upheld Mr. Snyder’s conviction.

The case concerns a federal legal provision, 18 U.S.C. Section 666(a)(l)(B), which makes it a crime for a state or local official to “corruptly solicit, demand ... or accept ... anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any” government business involving anything valued at $5,000 or more.

Joe Percoco (R), former top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, leaves federal court after being sentenced to six years in prison for corruption charges, in New York City, on Sept. 20, 2018. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Federal courts of appeal are “deeply divided” over whether Section 666 criminalizes gratuities, which are defined as “payments in recognition of actions the official has already taken or committed to take, without any quid pro quo agreement to take those actions,” according to Mr. Snyder’s petition.

In the 1st and 5th circuits, gratuities aren’t criminal.

“To secure a section 666 conviction, the government must instead prove that the official and the payor agreed to exchange something of value for official action. In other words, the government must prove a quid pro quo bribe like paying a legislator to vote for a bill.”

But the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 11th circuits don’t require a quid pro quo and allow convictions for gratuities.

Although Section 666 requires an official to act “corruptly,” those circuits and the government “read that word to require only that officials knew they were getting something of value that was intended to reward them.”

“That capacious interpretation risks chilling an enormous range of legitimate conduct. A constituent might donate to the campaign of a politician who took an action the constituent likes. Or a real estate agent might offer a deal on a condo to a city housing official whose policies helped the agent weather a recession.”

In the five circuits, “those actions are illegal, and officials can be prosecuted for accepting donations or gifts.”

At the time of the alleged bribe, Mr. Snyder was paid about $62,000 a year to be mayor and his small business was struggling. The father of four owned a mortgage company that was adversely affected by the Great Recession and owed tax penalties to the IRS.

Indiana law allows small-town mayors to pursue other employment, so Mr. Snyder began offering consulting services.

Convicted

The problem with the government’s case is that Mr. Snyder was convicted under Section 666 “for accepting $13,000 from a truck company after the company successfully won bids to sell garbage trucks to the City,” the petition states.

The federal government argued that Mr. Snyder steered two contracts for town garbage trucks to a trucking company in exchange for the payment.

Mr. Snyder says the payment was “a valid transaction with his consulting business, as the truck company’s owner testified at trial.”

The government didn’t argue that Mr. Snyder agreed to rig the bidding process for the $13,000 payment. Instead, it claimed that he approached the company and accepted the payment after the bidding was finished, which in Mr. Snyder’s view made the payment a gratuity, according to the petition.

In a brief, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote that the government agrees with the 7th Circuit’s finding that “a reasonable jury could conclude that [Mr. Snyder] accepted the [$13,000] check as a bribe or gratuity for steering” contracts to the trucking company.

“The court of appeals correctly determined that Section 666 prohibits both quid pro quo bribery and the corrupt acceptance of gratuities,” she wrote.

Mr. Snyder’s attorney, Lisa Blatt of Williams and Connolly in Washington, and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The oral argument hasn’t yet been scheduled in the case.