Opinion ID: 3049934
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Bribes of Wilson

Text: Sometime in mid-1999, defendant Wilson complained to Grady Pugh over lunch about the cost of college and that he might not be able to afford to send his son Justin to UAB for the upcoming semester (fall 1999). Grady Pugh responded that PUGH “had done a lot” for “colleges and education” and suggested PUGH might “sponsor a scholarship,” but wanted to make sure “we couldn’t get in any trouble for it.” Sometime in August 1999, Wilson called Grady Pugh to accept the scholarship offer. As noted above, on August 20, 1999, defendant Wilson used a JCESD fax machine to send Grady Pugh a letter expressing his gratitude and instructing him to send a $4,500 check to UAB to credit Wilson’s son’s account. PUGH sent the check to UAB four days later. There was no evidence that the son ever sent PUGH an application for the scholarship. Grady Pugh’s secretary typed the letter and signed Grady Pugh’s name. Grady Pugh never met nor spoke with Wilson’s son before sending the $4,500 check to UAB on August 24, 1999. The accompanying letter simply asked UAB to credit the payment to Wilson’s son’s account and gave no other instructions. Although PUGH had made charitable contributions to schools and colleges, including UAB, it had never previously awarded a scholarship to an individual student. Grady Pugh thought the money would go 43 toward “books and tuition” but could not remember exactly what Wilson had said to him. Grady Pugh was unaware that FWDE had already paid Wilson’s son’s tuition and fees for the 1999-2000 school year.29 UAB applied PUGH’s scholarship money to Wilson’s son’s account in four quarterly installments of $1,125 per installment, as was its standard practice for scholarships when a donor did not instruct otherwise. UAB took about one third of the PUGH money to cover the son’s housing and other fees, and disbursed the remainder of the PUGH money directly to the son each quarter. The installments were disbursed to the son in September 1999, December 1999, March 2000, and June 2000. Wilson’s son signed a receipt each time. Grady Pugh testified that he never did anything after August 1999 to follow up on the “scholarship” and he did not know that UAB would defer full payment into the following year. The government did not present any evidence that Wilson was aware of UAB’s payment arrangements. Grady Pugh explained his intent in giving the scholarship to Wilson’s son: When you offer somebody something like that . . . you expect them to help you if they can. And when I did that for [Wilson], I felt like if he got a chance to help us, he would. Grady Pugh explained that giving things of value to County employees provided 29 The government did not allege there was anything improper about the FWDE scholarship. 44 PUGH with the “general benefit” of “hav[ing] preferential treatment and, you know, if we had problems it would help resolve the problems. Numerous ways that things could be made easier.”