Following a mistrial in the AT&T bribery case last week, a federal judge said Tuesday he would hold rare oral arguments on a defense motion for acquittal and would “go back to the drawing board” on jury instructions if the case is retried.
U.S. District Attorney Robert Gettleman’s comments came in the first hearing since a jury deadlocked 11-1 Thursday to convict Paul La Schiazza, the former AT&T Illinois chairman accused of masterminding a scheme to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan to win support for the company’s legislation in Springfield.
The Tribune reported after the trial that the jury had serious questions about a key element of the bribery instruction, which was amended to satisfy a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that raised the bar for prosecutors in a number of Illinois public corruption cases.
After prosecutors told Gettleman Tuesday they intended to retry the case, the judge ordered La Schiazza’s defense team to file its motion for acquittal, known as a “Rule 29” motion, by Friday.
Such motions are common and almost always denied without a hearing. But because of the stakes at stake, Gettleman said he would instead hold oral arguments on Nov. 14.
“I’m going to give this motion very serious consideration, and if I reject it, I think we’ll have to go back to the drawing board on the jury instructions, because I think we can improve them,” Gettleman said, adding that he plans to file a written decision to make a better case.
“As we know, this is a changing field,” the judge said. “I think the issue is important enough to warrant an article.”
Meanwhile, the closing arguments in La Schiazza’s case will land in the middle of Madigan’s racketeering trial, which begins in two weeks and could pose similar challenges for prosecutors, particularly on several counts where they now have to prove there was a prior agreement with Madigan to exchange something of value for an official act.
Gettleman alluded to Madigan’s trial during Tuesday’s hearing, noting that it presented “similar issues” to those they faced.
“Maybe we’ll get some guidance from the (7th U.S. Circuit) Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court, who knows,” the judge said. “We could certainly use that.”
If a new trial does occur, Gettleman said, it likely wouldn’t happen until spring or summer 2025, because of his schedule.
In its decision on appeal by former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder, the Supreme Court ruled that “gratuities” — or gifts given as thanks for actions already taken by a public official — are not criminalized under federal law.
The justices have made clear that bribery must involve two parties who, with corrupt intentions, enter into an explicit agreement to exchange benefits for official action. This requires “a corrupt state of mind and an intent to be influenced in the official act,” the court wrote in Snyder.
It remains to be seen how much of a worrying sign La Schiazza’s mistrial is for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but this is the second consecutive public corruption case after Snyder where prosecutors have failed to secure a conviction.
But jurors said they struggled to answer the question of intent when it came to allegations of influence over officials.
Juror Jocelyn Duran said she came away from La Schiazza’s trial having learned a lot about politics and its often fuzzy contours. She said there wasn’t much difference between the wording of the bribery law and the definition of “lobbying” given to jurors during testimony.
“The rules and regulations around lobbyists are not at all clear, and that fine line between lobbying and bribery or any other kind of illegal act is very difficult to determine,” Duran, 29, a Chicago market researcher, told the Tribune Thursday night.
Another juror, a 62-year-old Naperville man, was among several members of the jury who stayed to discuss the case with attorneys in open court. He told the defense team that their discussions got bogged down in whether there was an “exchange” between La Schiazza and Madigan and whether La Schiazza knew the exchange was inappropriate.
“We really had a hard time understanding (La Schiazza’s) intent,” he said, adding that without the defendant on the witness stand, “we could only deal with what was presented to us.”
La Schiazza, 66, was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in October 2022 with conspiracy, federal program bribery and using a facility in interstate commerce to further unlawful activity. The most serious charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The charges alleged that La Schiazza agreed in 2017 to pay $2,500 a month to retired state Rep. Eddie Acevedo, Madigan’s former deputy majority leader, through the lobbying firm of Tom Cullen, a longtime Madigan political aide.
In exchange for those payments, the president helped push AT&T’s COLR (collectively known as “mandatory landline service”) bill through the General Assembly, giving La Schiazza a new start in his career and saving the telecommunications giant millions of dollars, prosecutors say.
La Schiazza’s lawyers argued that the contract with Acevedo was nothing more than a legal lobbying operation, which by its very nature is an attempt to curry favor with a politician. They also said there was no evidence linking the decision to pay Acevedo to any official action taken by Madigan.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
