The Supreme Court by a party-line 6-3 vote decided that "a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken." A former mayor was convicted of accepting $13,000 from a trucking company to which the city had granted a $1 million dollar contract. The conservative majority ruled that gratuities after the fact cannot be prosecuted under a corruption law, but they can be prosecuted under gift laws, if applicable. This is another in a series of rulings from the Court (including Citizens United v. FEC) which restrict criminality to quid pro quo corruption. Their definition of corruption makes it easy for corruption to be hidden and would reduce prosecutable corruption to cases where politicians act unbelievably stupidly.
Charlie Cooper
No comments:
Post a Comment