Brissette, Sullivan’s lawyers push appeals court for dismissal

Criminal counsel for two top aides of Mayor Martin J. Walsh want their clients’ stagnant extortion charges put to rest, arguing prosecutors have had long enough to decide whether to appeal the case’s dismissal back in March.

Attorneys Thomas Kiley for Timothy Sullivan and William Kettlewell for Kenneth Brissette are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in South Boston to broom the matter after U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s Office requested an extension to file an opening brief for the third time since May. It was due today.

“The Defendants’ right to speedy resolution of the charges against them is not outweighed by the Government’s ‘need’ for more time,” Kiley and Kettlewell stated in their written filing.

Prosecutors are asking the appeals court to give them an additional 30 days, which would push their filing deadline to Sept. 7.

“The Office of the Solicitor General has not yet completed its review and decided whether to pursue this appeal,” they explained in their motion for an extension. They said a draft of the feds’ brief “is substantially complete.”

Brissette, Walsh’s director of tourism, sports and entertainment, and Sullivan, chief of staff of intergovernmental relations, returned to work after their extortion indictments were dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin in March.

Walsh’s lieutenants were facing up to 20 years in prison if convicted of using threats to bully Crash Line Productions into hiring unneeded union labor for the 2014 Boston Calling music festival, formerly staged on City Hall Plaza. Prosecutors told Sorokin they could not prove their case if he insisted on instructing jurors it must be proven Brissette and Sullivan personally benefited from twisting arms to land International Alliance Of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 11 workers jobs.

An appeal to overturn Sorokin and remand the case for trial would likely focus on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1956 ruling that convicting an individual of Hobbs Act extortion “in no way depends upon having a direct benefit conferred upon the person who obtains the property.”