Vrdolyak lawyers renew bid for release
Lawyers for former Ald. Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak have vigorously re-upped his plea for a compassionate early release from prison, saying the government’s fight to keep the frail, once-powerful politician behind bars “fails to communicate a degree of humanity.”
Vrdolyak, 84 and confined to a wheelchair, has dementia and suffered a fall that resulted in traumatic brain injury, and he should be released to protect him from quick-spreading COVID-19 variants that represent a “grave risk” to his life, his attorneys argued in a filing late Tuesday.
Vrdolyak, following several pandemic-related delays, only began serving his 18-month sentence on Nov. 30 at a federal medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota, with access to Mayo Clinic. He is not scheduled to be released from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons until March 2023, when he would be 85.
He pleaded guilty in March 2019 to a tax charge alleging he obstructed an IRS investigation related to millions of dollars that Vrdolyak and an associate reaped from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies.
The one-time power broker rose to prominence as he headed the “Vrdolyak 29” bloc of aldermen who sought to thwart Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, at every turn during the 1980s “Council Wars” period when the
city’s hostile politics earned it the nickname “Beirut on the Lake.”
In late January, federal prosecutors called Vrdolyak’s
request for an early release “frivolous,” noting he has been seeking to cut his sentence short since he entered prison shortly after Thanksgiving.
“The idea that there is some sort of white-collar criminal privilege that entitles fraudsters like the defendant to submit requests for release from custody on the day they arrive — and to be released after serving only several weeks of their sentence — is a mockery of justice,” wrote Amarjeet Bhachu, an assistant U.S. attorney.
Bhachu acknowledged Vrdolyak’s hospital stay for a fall that caused a skull fracture. But the prosecutor said Vrdolyak was able to return to the federal medical prison in “approximately one day” and is housed in a unit with 24-hour nursing care and a doctor.
Further, prosecutors argued the federal prison system has taken many steps to reduce the risk of prisoners catching COVID-19.
Cutting Vrdolyak’s sentence could embolden others to delay their “day of reckoning,” and then appeal their advanced age and health “as an excuse not to serve a custodial sentence at all,” Bhachu wrote.
Vrdolyak’s attorneys, Gabrielle Sansonetti and Alan Ellis, said the government’s resistance to the early release is “shocking,” saying it was delivered with “gratuitous vitriol” and “made in an attempt to emotionally manipulate the court.”
“The government’s accusation that Mr. Vrdolyak’s utilization of the legal levers of the criminal justice system … is somehow defiant, is genuinely callous,” the defense attorneys argued.
They argued Vrdolyak is sickly and “not the same man” who walked into prison with a “complete grasp of reality.” They said he suffered a breakdown during an initial 14-day quarantine, lost 15 pounds and is now a “confused, frail, man often untethered to reality” in a prison where the omicron variant still rages.
Vrdolyak pleaded guilty to a tax charge alleging he obstructed an IRS investigation into payments to and from his friend and associate Daniel Soso related to the state’s $9.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies in the late 1990s. Soso, a lawyer and former Chicago cop, pleaded guilty in 2019 to income tax evasion and was sentenced in March 2020 to two years in prison.