The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday began hearing arguments in bids by an ex-aide to Democratic former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and a businessman to overturn their bribery and fraud convictions in a pair of cases that could make it harder to pursue public corruption prosecutions.
The justices were considering the appeals by Joseph Percoco and Louis Ciminelli, who were charged in related cases in 2016 in a corruption crackdown by federal prosecutors in Manhattan centered on the halls of the state capital of Albany.
The Supreme Court's eventual rulings, expected by the end of June, also will affect three co-defendants charged in corruption and fraud cases during Cuomo's tenure as governor involving state contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Percoco was sentenced in 2018 to six years in prison. Howe pleaded guilty and cooperated with investigators. Real estate developer Steven Aiello, who prosecutors said orchestrated bribes to Percoco, was also convicted at trial.
"He took no oath of public office, he received no salary from the public fisc, he possessed no legal authority to bind the state or make decisions for it," Yaakov Roth, Percoco's lawyer, told the court. "What he did have, like many lobbyists and donors and interest groups and others, was influence." "There has to be something wrong like that," Kagan said. "But your theory would suggest that we can't prosecute the public official under this statute."
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