Judge denies motion in City Hall extortion case
Blasts prosecutor argument against Hub aides
The feds were dealt a blow in their case against City Hall yesterday when the judge refused to alter jury instructions which prosecutors claim “will preclude the government from proving its case.”
Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan, two top aides to Mayor Martin J. Walsh, face extortion charges for allegedly forcing concert organizers to hire union labor at the Boston Calling music festival on City Hall Plaza.
Earlier this month, prosecutors told federal Judge Leo T. Sorokin that the jury instructions must change for their case to succeed. Yesterday, Sorokin declined to change the instructions.
“The government now seeks reconsideration of the proposed instruction, arguing it is ‘based on an incorrect reading of the law’ and ‘will preclude the government from proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt,’ ” Sorkin wrote. “The motion to reconsider is denied.”
Sorokin is instructing jurors that prosecutors must prove Brissette and
Sullivan received a direct benefit from prevailing upon concert organizers Crash Line Productions to hire union workers.
In yesterday’s ruling,
Sorokin spent 28 pages explaining how prosecutors have thus far failed to demonstrate that he should change those instructions.
“Both the plain meaning of the Hobbs Act’s terms and common sense dictate that one cannot ‘obtain’ property absent a showing of either actual acquisition thereof (along with the ability to exercise, transfer, or sell the property), or an identifiable benefit therefrom,” Sorokin writes.
He later blasted the “shifting sands” of prosecutors’ case against Brissette and Sullivan.
“The shifting sands of the government’s legal theory, its persistent resistance to earlier resolution of the legal issues, and its refusal to create a firm factual record could suggest an effort to intentionally delay resolution of this case,” Sorokin wrote.
Brissette, the city’s director of tourism, sports and entertainment, and Sullivan, Walsh’s chief of staff for intergovernmental relations, are set to go to trial Monday in U.S. District
Court in
Boston.