CHICAGO — A federal appellate court panel tossed out five of 18 corruption-related counts that landed former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich a 14-year sentence in 2011.
Blagojevich was convicted of corruption charges for using his office to enrich his campaign coffers and his attempts to profit from his pick to fill the Senate seat of President Obama.
Federal prosecutors could move to retry the former governor on those counts. Legal experts said they don't expect such a move, which means Blagojevich will return to the federal court for a new sentencing hearing.
While the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said Blagojevich should receive a new sentencing hearing, the panel also found that the evidence in the case is overwhelming and the current sentence is not out of line on the counts that remain intact.
"It is not possible to call the 168 months unlawfully high for Blagojevich's crimes, but the district judge should consider on remand whether it is the most appropriate sentence," read the panel's opinion. U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel in Chicago presided over the trial.
The counts were voided based on technical issues involving jury instructions with the appellate panel finding that the lower court erred in how they were delivered.
"The instructions permitted the jury to convict even if it found that his only request of Sen. Obama was for a position in the cabinet. The instructions treated all proposals alike. We conclude, however, that they are legally different: a proposal to trade one public act for another, a form of logrolling, is fundamentally unlike the swap of an official act for a private payment," the opinion read.
Blagojevich was in office when authorities arrested him in late 2008 following a public corruption probe of pay-to-play schemes in state government conducted by the U.S. Attorney's office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal agencies. Blagojevich was caught on wiretaps attempting to trade the Senate appointment for personal gain after Obama's 2008 victory.
The counts included wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, extortion conspiracy, and bribery conspiracy. The convictions came in a retrial after a federal jury in 2010 deadlocked on 23 of 24 counts against him and found him guilty only of lying to federal investigators.
In the second trial, prosecutors dropped the more complicated counts involving racketeering. The dropped charges included the accusation that Blagojevich and his cronies rigged the senior-manager pick for the state's $10 billion 2003 pension bond sale in a kickback scheme. They also dropped the allegation that the former executive director of the Illinois Finance Authority was named to the post in exchange for campaign contributions.
Blagojevich's refusal to resign his post after the 2008 arrest led to his impeachment by the state House, and subsequent conviction and removal from office by the Senate in January 2009, putting the reins of government into the hands of then-Lieut. Gov. Pat Quinn.
