* The full appellate bench voted 8-2 yesterday to deny Robert Sorich another shot at hearing Robert Sorich’s appeall…
Mayor Richard M. Daley’s former patronage chief and two other former city officials lost their bid Tuesday for an unusual hearing by all of Chicago’s actively sitting federal appeals judges.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a majority of the judges voting on whether to hold a so-called en banc hearing had been against the idea. It would have involved all the court’s judges except those on senior status.
Robert Sorich, 43, once known as the mayor’s patronage chief, was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted in July 2006 of using fraud to cover up the role of political patronage in city hiring. […]
A three-judge panel of the appeals court denied their request for a new trial on April 15, saying they had been “key players in a corrupt and far reaching scheme - that doled out thousands of city civil service jobs based on political patronage and nepotism.”
* But the Tribune makes a good point…
The defense will seize in part on a sharply worded dissent written by Judge Michael S. Kanne and joined by Judge Richard A. Posner, one of the nation’s most influential judges.
McCarthy’s lawyer, Patrick Deady, said Kanne grasped the argument the defendants have made all along: The federal government has criminalized what were violations of the Shakman civil court decree that forbids political influence in most City Hall hiring decisions. The defendants also argued they should not have been convicted of criminal fraud because they never took a dime in bribes or kickbacks.
“Without explicitly saying so, we have left the impression that the use of political patronage in personnel hiring by the city of Chicago is a crime,” Kanne wrote.
“Although no legislatively defined criminal offense outlaws patronage hiring by government entities in Illinois, such hiring is now seen as a crime because it violates the Shakman decrees—never mind that Shakman is simply a series of civil consent decrees subject only to civil penalties, and imposition of contempt if willfully violated,” the dissent said.
* The ruling went overwhelmingly against Sorich and his co-defendants, but I suppose there’s always a tiny ray of sunshine when you see such a strongly-worded dissent.
Sorich and his cohorts did do some really stupid things, like changing test scores and marking down people as having been interviewed when they weren’t. But the dissent - which you can read in full at this link - makes some valid points about the overreaching nature of these convictions.
Thoughts?