One of the charges against Judge DeLaughter is that his actions denied the state (or its citizens) the benefit of his “honest services” and that this was mail fraud. I have written in some detail about the legal and factual issues that could arise from this. Shortly there after, the United Supreme Court declined to take a case, U.S. v. Sorich, that involved the reach of the statute criminalizing honest services mail fraud. Justice Scalia wrote a long dissent, arguing the court should take the case because of possible overreaching in applying the statute. I wrote about that dissent. About a week later, Judge DeLaughter hired counsel, Tom Durkin from Chicago. Hohlbrook Mohr made a interesting catch about Durkin: That Durkin was one of the defense lawyers in Sorich. Mohr writes in his AP story about honest services:
“It’s an issue which we intend to vigorously pursue in our pretrial motions,” DeLaughter’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin of Chicago, told The Associated Press. …
Durkin submitted as an exhibit a National Law Journal article that calls the particular type of mail fraud “the hottest little criminal statute in federal court.” …
Mohr’s story sent me looking for more, and I found an interesting description of the theatricality of Durkin’s closing statement in the Sorkin case from a Chicago Tribune blog:
Defense attorney Thomas A. Durkin’s remarkable two-hour closing argument Monday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on behalf of Mayor Richard Daley’s former patronage chief employed so many of these tactics and danced so nimbly around the core issue raised in the prosecution’s closing argument that I left the courtroom feeling certain: He’s got nothing. …
Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Ruder had the best metaphor of the day when she invoked digestion. “The names that Sorich and [co-defendant Timothy] McCarthy provided at the front end,” she told the jury, “were the names that came out the back end of the process.”
Durkin never really denied this and conceded in so many words to the jury that some hiring under Sorich violated the civil consent decree forbidding the use of political considerations in filling most city jobs.
Pacing theatrically in front of the jury, he trashed the criminal case put on by the prosecutors. He called it “intellectually dishonest,” “bizarre,” “ridiculous beyond my imagination” and “the worst government evidence I have ever seen.” He said prosecutors had “failed miserably,” that he was “offended by the government’s presentation,” and he warned the jurors that “they’re hoping you’ll be stupid enough to go along with them.”
Continuing right over the top, Durkin suggested the jury “deliberate for 2 minutes, [then] kick this case right out the door.” He said his client didn’t invent this form of hiring, that he didn’t make enough money to be motivated to be part of any criminal scheme, that people liked and trusted him and that, gosh, the hiring regulations are so darn confusing that Sorich couldn’t have intended to commit a crime.
It was magnificent and, at the same time, transparently desperate.
Not having watched a second of the testimony myself, I could only infer from my seat in the gallery that the facts and the law are against him and that if Durkin had a table in front of him instead of a lectern, he would have pounded on it.
The blog also quotes a Trib story about Durkin’s closing:
(Durkin) stretched out his time in the late afternoon, stalling in circular arguments… (He was) valiant and colorful and interesting….But for all the charm and passion, it was only rhetoric, because he didn’t have more.
Well, that‘s certainly interesting, NMC. Makes me wonder whether Durkin rode in here on his own hobbyhorse rather than DeLaughter’s, ya know?
Patsy says Joey gets a few more weeks’ reprieve to keep tawkin’. (Or did y’all already know that?)