Former Portage Mayor James Snyder will be back on trial in the U.S. District Court in Hammond this fall — for the third time — on a bribery charge involving a $13,000 payment for a garbage truck contract.
U.S. District Court Judge Gretchen Lund of the Northern District of Indiana, who was assigned the case on Dec. 9, 2024 to assist in a speedy trial, set a two-week trial to begin Sept. 15 during a court hearing Wednesday.
When Lund asked Snyder if he waived his right under the Speedy Trial Act, which calls for a trial within 70 days of an incident or court hearing in a pending case, Snyder told the judge he understood the Speedy Trial Act and that it relates to a trial within 70 days.
“I am agreeing regarding the Speedy Trial Act, but not my constitutional right to a speedy trial,” Snyder told the court.
Lund asked him if he agreed to his trial date of Sept. 15.
“I don’t know how to answer that. Your honor, I am very careful with that because we were told we waived things at the 7th Circuit,” Snyder said, referring to his appeal of the case.
Snyder’s attorney Andrea Gambino said motions would be forthcoming about violations of the Speedy Trial Act for the length of the cases since his initial 2016 indictment.
“He doesn’t want to give up that right by waiving the Constitutional right,” Gambino said.
Lund clarified that the Speedy Trial Act he’d agreed to Wednesday wouldn’t go back to the beginning of his case.
“I would like the government to agree to that,” Snyder said.
Ultimately, Snyder acknowledged he would waive his rights under the Speedy Trial Act. Gambino agreed to the Sept. 15 trial date.
A Nov. 20 filing by the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals opened up the possibility of another trial after the U.S. Supreme Court in June tossed Snyder’s conviction in the case over a distinction of whether the $13,000 payment Snyder received after Great Lakes Peterbilt, then owned by the Buha brothers, received garbage truck contracts was a bribe or a gratuity.
The Supreme Court agreed with Snyder that the bribery statute commonly known as 666, which is its number in the federal criminal code, applies only to quid pro quo agreements and does not include “gratuities,” meaning rewards given to elected officials after the fact.
With the high court’s 6-3 ruling that the payment was a gratuity, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the appellate court, which determined, according to its filing, that the district court in Hammond could proceed with another trial if the government so decided.
Snyder’s attorneys, in their filings, rejected the government’s argument that he could have been convicted of either bribery or soliciting a gratuity and said there’s no legal basis for a retrial without a re-indictment. Federal prosecutors argued a new trial was the next step since a jury had already convicted him, and the appellate court agreed.
In a new trial, according to the appellate court filing, the government would be limited to a bribery theory “that Snyder corruptly solicited or demanded or accepted or agreed, in advance of the transactions, to accept anything of value in connection with the transactions.”
The filing also noted irregularities in the bidding process, the timing of the $13,000 payment and the “lack of corroborating evidence for Snyder’s claim that he was paid for consulting.”
“We continue to think the evidence would support a finding of bribery here, beyond a reasonable doubt,” the appellate court wrote. “The timing and size of the payment — and the problems with the attempts by Snyder and the Buhas to explain it — all support reasonable inferences that Snyder was conscious of wrongdoing and had a corrupt state of mind, as well as that he had reached an understanding ahead of time leading to such a large payment.”
The court noted that “Because the evidence was sufficient to convict on a bribery theory, the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar a new trial on the bribery charge. A new trial is permissible if the government chooses to pursue it.”
After multiple twists, turns and delays since Snyder was indicted on Nov. 17, 2016, in U.S. District Court in Hammond on two bribery counts and one of obstructing the IRS, a jury found Snyder not guilty on a bribery count involving a towing contract and guilty on the other two counts.
The second bribery conviction, over allegations surrounding a $13,000 payment involving around $1 million in contracts for garbage trucks, stood after two trials, only to get overturned when the Supreme Court ruled that the payment was a gratuity, not a bribe, and criminalizing the payment put even routine campaign contributions at the risk of the federal government’s wrath.
Overturning Snyder’s conviction had a ripple effect on countless other cases, most notably prominent cases in Illinois, including the trial of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan and the case of the “ComEd Four” who were convicted of a scheme to bribe him. Madigan’s trial is now underway.
The high court’s June 26 decision determined, among other matters, that the payment to Snyder from the Buha brothers, owners of Great Lakes Peterbilt, was a gratuity because Snyder received the money, reportedly for consulting work, after the business got the garbage truck contracts and not before.
Federal prosecutors have described Snyder in their filing as “a thoroughly corrupt public official, twice convicted by a jury of his peers for receiving a $13,000 payoff,” and note there is “no sound legal basis” for a windfall dismissal because of an omission from jury instructions, which was one of the contentions of Snyder’s attorneys.
Snyder, a Republican, was first elected mayor in 2011 and reelected in 2015, a term cut short by his federal conviction in February 2019.
Snyder received a sentence of 21 months in prison for the bribery and IRS convictions and a year on supervised release from Kennelly. Still, Snyder successfully argued that the start of his sentence should be postponed until his bid to have the Supreme Court hear his case was complete.
Amy Lavalley contributed.