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Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s landmark racketeering trial was postponed Wednesday pending a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court in a Chicago-area bribery case that could fundamentally alter what prosecutors are required to prove.
The new date for the trial was set for Oct. 8. It’s expected to last up to three months.
“I don’t do this lightly,” U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey said. “But it’s better to do it right than to do it twice.”
Blakey’s ruling came as Madigan, the former leader of the state Democratic Party who holds the nationwide record 36 years as speaker, appeared in court for the first time since his indictment nearly two years ago.
Blakey had allowed both Madigan and his co-defendant, longtime confidant Michael McClain, to appear via video conference, which McClain accepted. Madigan, however, appeared in person instead, walking into the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with his legal team shortly after 1:30 p.m., noticeably grayer around the temples than when he controlled the House.
[ Michael Madigan, ComEd and corruption: Timeline of how the investigation unfolded ]
While awaiting the start of the proceedings, Madigan nodded hello at lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, who shook hands with his attorneys.
The former speaker sat at the defense table for most of the hourlong hearing dressed in a black suit and blue tie, wearing reading glasses and occasionally taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Near the end, Madigan was asked to step forward to the microphone so the judge could confirm he agreed to the trial delay.
“Uh, yes I do your honor,” Madigan said in a soft voice, marking the first words he has uttered in the courtroom since the indictment came down in March 2022. His previous appearances came by telephone at two different arraignments, and both times he was not asked to speak.
Asked by a Tribune reporter after the hearing if he had any comment, Madigan only smiled. He then strode past a horde of television news cameras in the courthouse lobby and was followed by reporters and cameramen down South Dearborn Street. As they neared his lawyers’ offices at the Monadnock Building, someone in Madigan’s entourage said jokingly, “Do you feel like Taylor Swift, Mr. Speaker?”
At issue Wednesday was whether the April 1 trial date should stand in light of the Supreme Court’s decision last month to take up the petition of James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, convicted of taking bribes from a trucking company that had won contracts to supply garbage trucks to the town.
A decision from the high court overturning that conviction could resolve a split among federal circuits over whether “rewards and gratuities” given to a public official constitute bribes, even in the absence of a distinct quid pro quo.
Where the Supreme Court lands on the issue could reverberate across a number of high-profile public corruption cases in Chicago, where defense attorneys have long complained that prosecutors overreach when it comes to charging public officials under the federal bribery statute with illegally receiving gratuities.
[ Supreme Court agrees to review former Portage Mayor James Snyder’s public corruption case ]
Soon after the Supreme Court’s announcement about the Snyder case in mid-December, defense attorneys in the “ComEd Four” case, where McClain and three others were convicted last year in a scheme to bribe Madigan to help the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield, filed motions to delay the sentencings that had been set for this month.
A similar motion was filed a week later in the separate racketeering indictment against Madigan and McClain, which is made up in large part of the same ComEd bribery allegations.
In response Tuesday, Bhachu noted that only a handful of the counts in the Madigan indictment stem from the bribery statute at issue with the high court, and that the public and parties for both sides have a vested interest in getting closure in the high-profile case.
“Granting extended delays such as the one sought here contributes to a general sense that the wheels of justice do not move swiftly enough,” Bhachu wrote in his filing, adding that there could also be issues with witnesses’ memories and availability.
In court Wednesday, Madigan attorney Daniel Collins said the effects of a short delay would be minimal because the case largely involves secret recordings, which will not change. Also, Collins said, while the U.S. attorney’s office has not confirmed it, “all signs are that they are not going to call their (main) cooperator,” former Ald. Daniel Solis.
Collins said to go forward with so many unanswered questions would create a “tremendous amount of prejudice” for Madigan and McClain. He also said both sides could continue to do important work getting ready for trial while awaiting answers from the Supreme Court.
“We’re not stopping our efforts to prepare for this case, we’re not putting it on a shelf,” he said. “In the end were going to have a more efficient trial and a fairer trial for all parties.”
Bhachu argued Wednesday that whatever the Supreme Court winds up doing, “They’re not going to delete the word ‘reward’ from the statute.” He also said the “legislative history is clear as a bell that the statute is meant to include gratuities.”
Blakey, however, sided with the defense, saying it would be “fool’s errand to figure out what the Supreme Court’s going to do” in the Indiana case, and that holding a trial without knowing what the rules were going to be would be unfair.
“It would be like starting a football game and then halfway though announcing we’re going to play baseball,” Blakey said, apologizing for the somewhat shaky analogy.
The judge also said that the Madigan case has proceeded toward trial at a fairly normal pace, even though the public might have the impression from movies and television that “a guy gets arrested and the next scene is the trial.”
“That’s not the case in real life,” Blakey said.
Snyder was convicted of accepting $13,000 from a company that had recently won contracts to sell the city garbage trucks. He was originally tried and convicted of one count of bribery and one tax-related offense in 2019, but successfully moved for a new trial on the bribery count. The jury convicted him again following a second trial in 2021.
The question in the case is whether the federal bribery statute criminalizes payments to public officials without a quid pro quo agreement under a section of the statute that bans “gratuities.”
That section has been used by federal prosecutors in Chicago to go after a number of politicians in recent years, including former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
The ComEd Four were found guilty of bribery conspiracy and falsification of business records. In addition to McClain, a former ComEd contract lobbyist, the defendants included former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, ex-ComEd executive John Hooker and Jay Doherty, who worked as a contract lobbyist for ComEd for 30 years and served as president of the City Club of Chicago civic forum.
The sentencings for all four were vacated last month, but not because of the Snyder case. Instead, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber was unavailable and asked that they be reset.
Meanwhile, decision to delay Madigan’s trial came as Blakey had yet to rule on motions to dismiss by Madigan’s lawyers that tread some of the same legal ground that will be considered by the Supreme Court.
The motion argued that prosecutors were misreading the federal bribery statute to criminalize normal politicking and failing to link any action Madigan took — or didn’t take — that was beneficial to ComEd with rewards going to the speaker or his friends.
“Currying favor with government officials — even those with the capacity to influence legislation of interest to the employers — is legal,” the 75-page motion to dismiss stated, adding that the “far-flung” indictment “impermissibly treats lawful ingratiation as illegal bribery, and stitches together unrelated allegations of purported misconduct into a single scheme.”
The motion said that applying the bribery statute to Madigan’s conduct “would expose untold numbers of public officials and their constituents to federal prosecution.”
“As indicted here, any state or local official who receives (and anyone who gives a state or local official) a ‘thing of value’ would risk prosecution if the official ever took an action that benefits the giver — even if the thing of value and the act are so attenuated as to permit only the most feeble inference of a causal connection between the two,” the motion stated.
In response, prosecutors have argued that Madigan “exploited his position as a high-ranking public official to manipulate the levers of state and local government for the purpose of illegally enriching himself and his associates.”
“Madigan, together with his loyal lieutenant Michael McClain — a self-described soldier and faithful agent for Madigan — arranged for a flood of corrupt payments and perks to be doled out to Madigan and his associates in exchange and as a reward for Madigan’s abuse of his official powers,” the prosecution team wrote in its filing.
Blakey told both sides Wednesday the defense could refile its motion in a different form once the Supreme Court decision is known.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Madigan’s former chief of staff, Tim Mapes, have also filed a motion to stay his Jan. 31 sentencing on perjury and attempted obstruction of justice charges. A jury convicted Mapes in August of lying to a federal grand jury in a failed attempt to protect his longtime boss from a widening political corruption investigation.
In response, prosecutors called Mapes’ effort a “frivolous litigation strategy in a desperate effort to stall his sentencing.”
The judge in that case has yet to rule.
The issue also briefly came up in the trial of former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke, who was convicted of racketeering conspiracy on Dec. 21, a case that included several counts under the federal bribery statute.
One the most powerful and longest-serving politicians in state history, Madigan lost the speakership in 2021 when 19 mostly female lawmakers refused to vote to give him the gavel for another two-year term. Shortly after, he resigned the House seat he had held for just over 50 years and also his position as the chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party.
Afternoon Briefing
Madigan was first outed as “Public Official A” in court records in a deferred prosecution agreement filed in June 2020 where ComEd acknowledged it had showered the speaker with various rewards in exchange for his assistance with its legislative agenda in Springfield.
Among the perks were do-nothing jobs for Madigan’s top political cronies, college internships for students in his 13th Ward power base, legal business for political ally Victor Reyes and the appointment of his choice for the state-regulated utility’s board of directors, according to the allegations.
In addition to the ComEd conspiracy, the indictment against Madigan accused the former speaker of similar conduct involving AT&T. He’s also charged with trying to pressure developers in Chinatown to steer business to his private law firm with the help of Solis.
Madigan, 81, and McClain, 76, have both pleaded not guilty.
Chicago Tribune’s Terrence Antonio James contributed.
rlong@chicagotribune.com