Opinion ID: 3001508
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Joining the scheme

Text: Slattery argues that insufficient evidence shows that he joined the fraudulent scheme and possessed the specific intent to defraud. The argument has very little merit. To start with, Slattery personally falsified hundreds, if not thousands, of interview forms. He contends that “the forms cannot be accurately described as true or false,” but this is a bit too philosophical for us, as we suspect it was for the jury. The forms contained numerical scores for such categories as, in a truck driver hiring sequence, driving ability and past driving experience. Although these criteria are perhaps subjective, filling them out willy-nilly and dozens at a time—high scores for blessed applicants, low scores for the rest, without even an attempt to quantify their skills—can fairly be described as falsification. 22 Nos. 06-4251, 06-4252, 06-4253 & 06-4254 The government presented other damning evidence of Slattery’s participation and his intent to defraud. A union complained after its members did poorly in one hiring sequence, and one of the city’s labor liaisons asked Slattery for the interview forms to back up the city’s hiring decisions. Only one problem: the interview forms had not been completed yet. According to the liaison’s testimony, after Slattery delivered this “shocking” news, she said, “Pat, please tell me you had a legitimate business reason for selecting the people that you selected. Did you base it on performance, attendance, anything?” She testified that Slattery replied, “no.” On appeal, Slattery attacks her credibility, but we will not upset the jury’s decision to believe her. Slattery also pleads ignorance, saying that no juror could have found that he even knew that a fraudulent hiring system was afoot, let alone joined it. We think the jury was well-supported in rejecting this contention. Slattery and Sorich were good friends, and Daniel Katalinic, a former deputy commissioner of Streets and Sanitation who ran a political organization, testified that he overheard Slattery complain that his own political workers were not getting choice enough jobs, and that he would talk to Sorich about the matter. Katalinic also testified, as did Slattery’s boss Jack Drumgould, that Slattery accompanied Drumgould to meetings in which Sorich would hand out a group of blessed applicants, and that Slattery sometimes took names directly from Sorich and passed them on to Drumgould for hiring. A reasonable jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt on this evidence that Slattery joined the scheme with an intent to defraud. Nos. 06-4251, 06-4252, 06-4253 & 06-4254 23