In urging the Supreme Court to hear Mr. Silvers case, his lawyers said that legal standard gave prosecutors too much power.
The Second Circuit approved jury instructions that allowed a state official to be convicted of federal bribery on a jurys after-the-fact finding that the official had an unexpressed, unilateral understanding (or misunderstanding) that he was being bribed, the lawyers wrote in their petition seeking Supreme Court review. The ruling, they wrote, places every official at the mercy of federal prosecutors, dismantling this courts work at reining in federal prosecutors.
The brief cited the McDonnell case, in which Mr. McDonnell had been accused of accepting luxury products, loans and vacations from a business executive in return for arranging meetings and urging underlings to consider the executives requests.
It also cited last years ruling in the Bridgegate case, in which the court unanimously overturned the convictions of two defendants in a case from New Jersey. The defendants, former associates of Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey at the time, were accused of taking part in a 2013 scheme meant to punish one of the governors political opponents that ended up creating four days of enormous traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge.
That was an abuse of power, the Supreme Court ruled, but not a federal crime.
Prosecutors in Mr. Silvers case responded that earlier Supreme Court decisions confirm that the government must prove that the public official understood that he was accepting the bribe in return for an official act but do not require proof that the bribe giver reached an agreement with the official or shared the officials corrupt purpose.
Mr. Silver, 76, served as speaker for more than two decades and played a leading role in almost every major aspect of state politics. In the final days of his administration, President Donald J. Trump considered granting clemency to Mr. Silver, who was sentenced to a 78-month prison term, but decided not to after criticism from Republicans in New York.read more
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Sheldon Silver’s Appeal
