‘SPECIFY NATURE OF CHARGES’
Judge: Extortion case changes must be explained
Prosecutors in the City Hall extortion case must give defense lawyers detailed information explaining why the indictments for two top mayoral aides were rewritten a month before their trial, a federal judge ordered yesterday.
“The indictment has changed the wording and, I think, maybe how the government is going to proceed with this case,” William Cintolo, attorney for Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s chief of staff for intergovernmental relations Timothy Sullivan, told U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein.
Dein told assistant U.S. Attorneys Laura Kaplan and Kristina Barclay to hand over the so-called bill of particulars to the defense no later than Dec. 18. The trial is scheduled to start Jan. 8.
The bill of particulars requests the government “specify the nature of the charges given” and explain how the second superseding indictment advances its case, Cintolo said.
“They’re overreaching. Their concept of politics is a little different than ours,” Cintolo complained about the prosecutors after Sullivan and Kenneth Brissette, Walsh’s director of tourism, sports and entertainment, briefly appeared in federal court yesterday morning.
The city officials — both on paid leave from their six-figure posts — pleaded not guilty to a second superseding indictment charging them with Hobbs Act conspiracy, extortion and aiding and abetting. They face up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.
Prosecutors last week made the key language change to the charges in an apparent bid to avoid a legal pitfall that may have cost them the highly publicized “Top Chef” case against four teamsters earlier this year. Rather than charging that in 2014 Sullivan and Brissette sought to force Crash Line Productions, organizer of the Boston Calling festival, to hire members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 11 “for imposed, unwanted, and unnecessary and superfluous services and wages,” the new indictment redefines the alleged extortion as “money to be paid as wages and employee benefits and as wages and employee benefits pursuant to a contract with IATSE Local 11 ... by the wrongful use of fear of economic harm.”
Federal prosecutors earlier this year lost the “Top Chef” case due to a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that forbids charging organized labor with Hobbs Act extortion if its tactics are in pursuit of a legitimate labor objective.
Cintolo noted Sullivan and Brissette aren’t in a union. For the two men to be convicted, he said, a jury must find they obtained property from Crash Line, when it was Local 11 that Crash Line contracted with to hire eight laborers and a foreman. Even if Brissette’s and Sullivan’s only objective was to please their boss, Cintolo said, “Crash Line can’t give them goodwill. Crash Line can’t give them anything.”