Former attorney seeks leniency for role in area bribery scheme
A former Oakland County attorney facing prison for his role in a Clinton Township bribery scheme has submitted over 100 character-reference letters from a wide range of people — a former basketball star, a Hollywood celebrity and several prominent people in the legal industry.
Jay Schwartz is seeking a federal prison term of 21 months, which would be below his attorneys’ computation of the sentencing guideline range of 2733 months, while U.S. Attorneys’ suggest range a higher range.
Schwartz is seeking the leniency based on his claim of a minimal, secondary involvement in the scheme, the limited long-term impact of the bribery and his exemplary reputation among his family, friends, employees and other associates, according to his attorneys.
Letters of support came from Shane Battier, a former college basketball star and NBA star who was coached by Schwartz at Detroit Country Day High School, TV game-show host and client Chuck Woolery, several judges and law-enforcement officers, lawyers, former colleagues and employees and friends.
Schwartz, a Northville resident, was convicted by a U.S. District Court jury last November of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery for his role in paying off a Clinton Township official for a vote on a municipal trash-hauling contract.
He is scheduled to be sentenced June 2 by Judge Robert Cleland following a June 1 hearing on the legal motions.
“The simple fact is that the greedy, corrupt, selfish, wheeling and dealing Jay Schwartz presented by the Government bears little relation to the real-life Jay Schwartz,” his attorneys wrote. “Jay Schwartz is known by all as a kind, selfless, warm-hearted family man, a skilled attorney with a high ethical standard, who donates his time to others, steeply discounts rates for clients to help them out, and cares more about the people he represents than the money that flows into his bank account.
“The community has much love, admiration, and respect for this man, and that does not happen overnight or by chance. It is earned over a lifetime.”
Schwartz’s attorneys, Thomas Cranmer and Gerald Gleeson of Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone submitted two legal briefs a combined 101 pages long and another 106 pages of exhibits, most of them the letters from supporters.
Schwartz is seeking a “downward variance” from the range proposed by his attorneys. The higher guideline range proposed by U.S. Attorneys was not provided in documents.
U.S. attorneys were to respond in a legal brief by today.
Bribery is punishable by up to 15 years in prison and conspiracy is punishable by up to five years in prison. The judge also could order Schwartz to repay up to three times the amount of money involved in the acts.
Schwartz’s law license has been suspended and he has closed the law firm he operated for many years with his father, Burton, in Farmington Hills. It had a high of 13 attorneys and 12 support employees in 2015, court documents say.
Schwartz was found guilty of providing over $40,000 worth of legal services to former Clinton Township trustee Dean Reynolds in his divorce case and facilitated Charles “Chuck” Rizzo, the CEO of the now defunct Rizzo Environmental Services, in providing a $3,000 cash bribe to Reynolds in 2015. It was done in exchange for Reynolds’ vote and efforts to award Rizzo Environmental with a multi-million dollar, 10year trash-hauling contract extension with the township.
Rizzo Environmental in Sterling Heights was a client of Schwartz’s firm for several years. Schwartz had been performing an increasing amount of legal work for Rizzo, with $365,000 worth of business in 2015, according to the feds.
The extension was approved in February 2016 in a unanimous vote by the township Board of Trustees.
Reynolds and Rizzo are serving prison time for their roles.
The cases were the result of a years-long federal investigation of corruption centered in Macomb County. About two dozen people have been convicted, most of them by plea.
In one their legal briefs, Schwartz’s attorneys detail his stressful, heartbreaking experience of his 13-year-old daughter being diagnosed in spring 2015 with a rare form of brain cancer that required a seven-week round of proton-beam radiation therapy at the University of Massachusetts and many other medical efforts that dramatically impacted him and his family. His daughter, Saffron, has survived and is now monitored closely.
Saffron Schwartz said her father is the stabilizing force in their family of five, including her mother and two younger brothers.
“My father is the ringleader of all of us, keeping us calm and collected,” she said, according to attorneys. “He is our beacon of hope throughout our darkest times.”
The attorneys wrote: “Jay Schwartz’s darkest days occurred during the very time period of the Reynolds saga. Frankly, Jay Schwartz should have stopped practicing law during this terrible time. But he didn’t. He made bad choices, decisions which bring him before the Court for sentencing.”
But they said Schwartz accepts the jury’s verdict.
“I fully accept and take complete responsibility for my actions and omissions. I have deep remorse for ever representing Chuck Rizzo and Dean Reynolds,” he said, according to attorneys. “Those were my decisions, bad choices that will haunt me the rest of my life.”
Still, his attorneys downplay his role in the criminal activity.
“Rizzo and Reynolds were the two principal actors in the conspiracy, and through them, all followed,” the attorneys write. “They directed the various participants in the conspiracy, recruited members into the conspiracy … and they benefited from the aims of the conspiracy.”
The attorneys also dispute U.S. Attorney’s claim the contract, which was taken over by Green For Life, will generate a 5.1% profit, resulting in a minimum $1.4 million contract value.
They say a financial expert at Stout Risius Ross determined GFL will realize a net loss from the contract, so the only calculation in the sentencing-guideline formula should be for the value of the bribes.
They also dispute the government’s claim the sentencing guidelines should be enhanced due to multiple bribes.
“The enhancement should not apply because this was a single incident of bribery rather than a series of discrete bribes intended to influence a series of discrete task,” they asserted.
In arguing for a lighter sentence, Schwartz’s attorney say his clean background and advanced age make him an unlikely candidate for recidivism.
In referencing the character references, the attorneys devote several pages to Schwartz’s relationship with Battier, who credits Schwartz with helping shape him to forge a successful career.
“I owe Jay Schwartz’s mentorship, time, and positivity a huge debt of gratitude for assisting me in achieving my objectives,” Battier wrote. “He was a pivotal figure in my early years.”
Schwartz helped Battier select an agent after he graduated from Duke University and was only of only two non-family members invited by Battier to attend his induction into the NCAA College Basketball Hall of Fame.
Schwartz’s attorneys say Battier is worth $25 million.
“Jay Schwartz has never demanded anything in exchange for his time and effort, and I believe he always wanted the best for me,” Battier says, documents say.
Schwartz’s attorneys asked, “If Jay Schwartz was the greedy, corrupt, selfish, wheeling and dealing lawyer the Government claims, then who better to line his pockets and take advantage of than a young man who developed into a world-famous multimillionaire under his tutelage?”
Other character letters came from, according to attorneys:
• Woolery, who wrote that “despite having worked with the ‘best LA had to offer’ such as Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro, he found that ‘none of these attorneys were like Jay Schwartz.’
“He was always focused on keeping us out of any legal issues, even if it meant less billable hours for him. … The man is as straight of an arrow as humanly possible.”
• Former Country Day basketball coach Kurt Keener, who said: “He was a gifted teacher of the game, but more importantly he was a tremendous mentor to the young men, who were quite a diverse group, in our program. In all our years together I never once observed Jay doing or even suggesting that we do anything that was improper, unethical or self serving.”
• Retired police officer Mark Young, who said of his experience with Schwartz: “I literally introduced him to others as my ‘Boy Scout’ attorney. He is as law and order as can be.”