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

Heading: PUGH’s Challenges to Counts 75 and 78

Text: PUGH challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as to its bribery conspiracy convictions on Count 75 (the Wilson scholarship) and Count 78 (land and vacations for Barber). However, ample evidence supports both convictions. The evidence established that when Grady Pugh gave Wilson’s son the scholarship, he expected Wilson to return the favor. Grady Pugh testified that when he provided the Wilson scholarship, he “felt like if [Wilson] got a chance to 59 Defendants also contend the government failed to prove any specific payment (or work on McNair’s studio or Swann’s home) was given or done in exchange for a specific official act by McNair or Swann. Because a specific quid pro quo is not an element of a § 666(a)(1)(B) or (a)(2) crime, there was necessarily no failure of proof as to that element. Alternatively, even assuming these § 666 crimes require, as the Second Circuit concluded in Ganim, that the government prove payments or such work were given or done in return for a promise of as yet unidentified future conduct favorable to the contractor-defendants in their County sewer projects, the evidence overwhelmingly established such facts and thus any error in the jury charge was harmless. And even under the Fourth Circuit’s approach in Jennings, which requires a “course of conduct of favors and gifts flowing to a public official in exchange for a pattern of official actions favorable to the donor,” the evidence here was sufficient, and thus any jury charge error was harmless. Jennings, 160 F.3d at 1014. 78 help us and return the favor, he would.” Only three days after Wilson faxed Grady Pugh information as to where PUGH should send the scholarship check — and the day before Grady Pugh sent it — Wilson approved PUGH’s request for a time extension that had been sitting on Wilson’s desk for four weeks. When PUGH submitted its extension request, PUGH was already exposed to liability of $76,000 in liquidated damages. The amount of exposure exceeded $100,000 by the time Wilson actually granted PUGH’s request. The evidence also supports the verdict that PUGH and Yessick conspired to bribe Barber. Barber oversaw all of the JCESD inspectors and awarded the no-bid emergency work contracts. In 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2001, PUGH paid for Barber’s vacations, but hid the payments in the company’s books. PUGH readily agreed to Barber’s June 2000 request to buy him a lot for a retirement home. PUGH’s Yessick contracted for the lot in Roland Pugh’s name but charged $45,000 to the Paradise Lake project to pay for it. Then, just before the closing, PUGH instead gave Barber a cashier’s check to buy the lot in his own name. The remitter’s name was left blank on that check. Yessick was told to retrieve all evidence that PUGH was ever involved. This required the realtor to fabricate a fictitious house sale to refund the original $1,000 deposit. Moreover, just months before Barber solicited PUGH for the purchase of the 79 lot, Barber designated the Paradise Lake project as an emergency. Because the cost of the project — $827,417.75 — greatly exceeded Barber’s $50,000 emergency work approval limit, and because there was no Paradise Lake contract on which to grant a field directive, the work was performed as a field directive on the unrelated multimillion dollar Cahaba River project. PUGH netted a profit of more than $400,000. PUGH argues the Wilson scholarship and Barber land transaction are not bribery conspiracies, but merely “buyer-seller” transactions. PUGH relies primarily on two drug cases, United States v. Mercer, 165 F.3d 1331, 1335 (11th Cir. 1999) (cash for drugs), and United States v. Dekle, 165 F.3d 826, 830-31 (11th Cir. 1999) (sex for drugs), for the proposition that there is no conspiracy where there is merely a “buy-sell transaction” without an “agreement to join together to accomplish a criminal objective beyond that already being accomplished by the transaction.” Mercer, 165 F.3d at 1335 (quotation marks omitted). PUGH argues that there was nothing agreed upon with Wilson or Barber outside of the one gift or one buy-sell transaction. The drug cases of Mercer and Dekle are materially different from § 666 bribery conspiracy cases. In a drug deal, once the sale is complete, there is no further criminal objective. In § 666 cases, once the gift is made, the defendant typically intends to corruptly influence the County employee’s 80 future actions. See United States v. Tilton, 610 F.2d 302, 307 (5th Cir. 1980)60 (bribee conspired with briber in part because of common goal of increasing their personal wealth). In § 666 cases, the defendants share both an anticipation of future action and a common goal of increasing their wealth illegally.61