On the third day of jury deliberations without a result at the Joe Bruno trial, the former Senate majority leader recognized a familiar face in the courtroom and during a break went over to sit next to Tom Precious, longtime Capitol correspondent of the Buffalo News. He was cracking wise about how everyone, especially Tom, commits at least three felonies a day according to the theories of federal prosecutors, and I didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Then the judge came back in and Bruno responded to Tom or someone that "only the rest of my life" is at stake here, at the same time as he was walking back up to his regular seat next to the lawyers and trying to explain to me what he had been talking about. It came from a recent New York Times article that referred to a former attorney general, he said.
So when I got home I looked up the Times Web site, but couldn't find anything like that under Bruno's name. That's because the article didn't mention him. It ran Nov. 24 and was headlined Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice, and was about growing criticism of federal prosecutions, including by former Attorney Generals Edwin Meese and Dick Thornburgh. The article, by Adam Liptak, referred to a new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” which "argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all."
The Times article also referred to the specific law under which Bruno is being prosecuted, mentioning a U.S. Chamber of Commerce "brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of 'honest services,' is, the brief said, both 'unintelligible' and 'used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.'
"The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic."
Oral argument for two honest services cases - one which involves a public official, the other a private businessman - are set for December 8th. It's time for the justices to heed Scalia's warning and reign in prosecutors' abuse of this vague statute.
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Posted by: KS | December 02, 2009 at 09:38 AM