Lawmakers push to uphold corruption-rap dismissal
Lawyers for Greater Boston's congressional delegation want the dismissal of federal charges against two top aides of Mayor Martin J. Walsh upheld, arguing the prosecution's theory of Hobbs Act extortion could put other government officials at risk of indictment.
"They are concerned that the prosecution's extortion theory would put any state and local official at risk of felony prosecution, if the official imposes an economic requirement on a business that federal prosecutors deem objectionable," attorneys acting on behalf of U.S. Reps. Michael E. Capuano, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Stephen F. Lynch and Katherine M. Clark wrote in their amicus brief filed Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals in South Boston.
Attorneys Michael Anderson, Paul Kelly, Donald Siegel and Jasper Groner slammed the prosecution of Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan as “an unacceptable interference with the functioning of representative government.”
Brissette, Walsh's director of sports, entertainment and tourism, and Sullivan, chief of staff of intergovernmental relations, are asking appellate justices to affirm U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin's March decision to broom their two-yearold corruption case.
Walsh's lieutenants faced 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 on City Hall Plaza.
Prosecutors conceded they could not win their case if Sorokin insisted on instructing jurors it must be proven Brissette and Sullivan personally benefited from twisting arms to land International Alliance Of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 11 workers jobs.
Sorokin refused to back down. The feds are now asking the appeals court to rule that he was wrong.
"In sum, it is settled law that Hobbs Act extortion does not require the government to prove that an extortionist received a personal benefit from the alleged extortion," states the feds’ brief seeking to have the case remanded for trial.
A hearing on the dispute has not been scheduled.
No Local 11 representatives were charged. The delegation’s lawyers point out, "If IATSE could not commit extortion by pressuring Crash Line to use union labor, these Defendants could not have done so by requiring Crash Line to do the same thing ... In the absence of some transfer of a thing of value to the Defendants, there is simply no 'thing of value' in the picture."