Feb 23, 2009 10:06 am US/Central
U.S. Supreme Court Won't Hear Daley Aides' Appeal
Robert Sorich And 2 Others Were Convicted Of Fraud In 2006
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Robert Sorich, a former patronage chief for Mayor Richard M. Daley, was convicted in 2006 of skirting laws that ban political city hiring.
CBS
Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief and two other former city officials have failed to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to consider setting aside their fraud convictions.
The justices, in an order Monday, are letting stand former patronage chief Robert Sorich's
July 2006 conviction and
46-month prison term. He was found guilty of skirting laws that ban political city hiring, along with former Department of Streets and Sanitation official Patrick Slattery, and former Sorich aide Timothy McCarthy.
During their trial, prosecutors said the men's fraud scheme was designed to hide the fact that city officials were
violating the so-called Shakman Decree – a more than 30-year-old court order that bars consideration of political affiliation in awarding all but about 1,300 of the 38,000 jobs on Chicago's city payroll.
The decree effectively outlaws Chicago's century-old political patronage tradition, long the fuel that made the city's once mighty Democratic political machine run. The decree is named for patronage-hating attorney Michael Shakman who blames his defeat in a 1970 election on hordes of campaign workers with city jobs who worked on behalf of a rival.
The federal appeals court in Chicago
earlier upheld the men's convictions. The court rejected defense arguments that the men could not be convicted of criminal fraud because they didn't take bribes or kickbacks. The court instead argued in April 2008 that they had been "key players in a corrupt and far reaching scheme ... that doled out thousands of city civil service jobs based on political patronage and nepotism."
Justice Antonin Scalia says he voted to accept the U.S. Supreme Court appeal and decide the case.
The case is Sorich v. U.S., 08-410.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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