Former Portage Mayor James Snyder and his legal team have until Friday to object to prosecutor’s filing to proceed to sentencing on the IRS charge conviction and drop a third trial on the bribery charge.
If a response isn’t filed by Friday, Judge Gretchen Lund wrote in an order late Friday that she would request probation office officials to file a revised presentence report and set a date for sentencing.
Snyder is scheduled to go to trial for a third time in U.S. District Court in Hammond on a bribery charge involving a $13,000 payment for a garbage truck contract. Currently, the trial is set to begin on Sept. 15, according to the government’s May 16 filing.
Last week, prosecutors filed court documents stating that after nearly a decade in court proceedings, Snyder “stands convicted of the felony offense of corruptly obstructing the Internal Revenue Services’ administration of the federal revenue laws,” according to court records.
“At this point, the United States believes the interests of justice are best served by proceeding to sentencing on the current count of conviction for Count 4 (the tax conviction), at which time it intends to present evidence of defendant’s bribery activities as part of its presentation on the factors to be considered in imposing a sentence,” prosecutors wrote.
If Snyder is sentenced on the tax conviction prosecutors will move to dismiss the bribery charge after imposition of the sentence. Prosecutors requested the court to set a sentencing date on the conviction charge within the next 90 days.
Snyder’s attorney Andréa Gambino did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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.
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 U.S. District Court Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois.
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.
akukulka@post-trib.com
