JUDGE IN CITY HALL TRIAL TO REVISIT VIEW OF HOBBS ACT
Feds cite Supreme Court precedent
The judge overseeing the looming corruption trial of two City Hall officials has agreed to revisit his interpretation of Hobbs Act extortion after prosecutors — worried his definition will sink their case — argued yesterday they have 60 years of Supreme Court law on their side.
U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin did not indicate when he will issue his ruling on the feds’ motion to reconsider his proposed jury instructions, but acknowledged he is cognizant jury selection starts in less than two weeks.
“I recognize the time constraints that apply,” Sorokin said at the close of a 10-minute hearing that was preceded by a private 40-minute sidebar discussion with prosecutors and the defense teams for Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan.
Brissette, director of tourism, sports and entertainment, and Sullivan, Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s chief of staff for intergovernmental relations, are charged with bullying Crash Line Productions into hiring unwanted union labor in 2014 for the Boston Calling music festival by withholding permits and suggesting the popular event would be disrupted by a giant inflatable rat.
Sorokin previously ruled he would explain to a jury that prosecutors need to show Brissette and Sullivan personally benefited from the alleged shakedown, even though it was the union workers Crash Line agreed to pay wages. Sorokin proposes to tell jurors, “A defendant does not personally benefit from the transfer of property when he merely hopes to receive some future benefit, or when he receives a speculative, unidentifiable, or purely psychological benefit from it.”
In seemingly direct contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1956 labor case United States v. Green, ruled Hobbs Act extortion “in no way depends upon having a direct benefit conferred upon the person who obtains the property.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristina Barclay told Sorokin yesterday, “The government agrees with the defense, and with the court, that it has to prove that the defendants obtained property of Crash Line in order to be convicted of Hobbs Act extortion. But by narrowing the definition of ‘obtain’ under Hobbs Act, the court has limited the government’s ability to prosecute these and other cases like these. The government’s moved to reconsider the order because we believe the instruction is legally incorrect, and we believe we can meet our burden of proof under the correct definition of ‘obtain’ — that which the Supreme Court ruled on in Green and has never amended.”
Brissette attorney Sara Silva argued the only case Sorokin need concern himself with is the one currently in front of him.
“There’s a set of facts, there’s the law, and that’s what the court should be ruling on,” Silva said. “If the government has difficulty in this case, they have avenues to deal with that.”