Court Opinion

ID: 9488817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:56:10.860684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:06.887825
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
A jury found that, while a state legislator, Richard Foley took money to influence votes in the state legislature. Federal bribery law makes Foley’s conduct a crime, and his failure at trial to challenge the reach of the federal bribery statute is not plain error.
On appeal, Foley raises a claim he never made to the trial court: that his form of bribe-taking is not covered by the federal bribery statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666. Section 666 makes it a federal crime for an agent of a state government, which receives over $10,-000 in federal funds, to take a bribe involving anything worth $6,000. As the statute puts it, it is a crime if such a government agent
corruptly ... accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded in connection with any business, transaction, or series of transactions of such ... government ... involving anything of value of $5,000 or more;
18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B).
Although the statute says it covers bribes involving “anything of value of $5,000 or more,” Foley argues that it only covers bribes that involve something worth $5,000 to the recipient of the federal funds. The ma*495jority agrees, because they “infer [this requirement] from the legislative history.” Thus the court vacates Foley’s conviction because there was no proof that the subject of his bribes was worth $5,000 to the state of Connecticut. I respectfully disagree.
The bribery statute covers Foley’s conduct. He corruptly accepted $25,000 to be influenced in the business of the Connecticut legislature on legislation worth over $5,000 to the bribers. The majority’s contrary conclusion belies the statute’s plain language and misreads its legislative history.
The statute does not contain the limitation the majority creates. It only requires that the subject of the bribes involve “anything of value of $5,000 or more,” (emphasis added) not something worth $5,000 to the government. The majority, however, bases its restrictive view on a few sentences from a 1984 Report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which described the statute’s purpose:
to create new offenses to augment the ability of the United States to vindicate significant acts of ... bribery involving federal monies that are disbursed to ... State and local governments ...
* * :H * * *
[and] to protect the integrity of the vast sums of money distributed through Federal programs....1
The Report explains that before the passage of section 666 “there [was] no statute of general applicability in this area.”2 Federal bribery law only banned bribes to federal officers and bribes to officials of agencies receiving money under federal job-training programs. Section 666 provided a blanket prohibition on bribes to agents of organizations receiving substantial money under federal programs.
This Committee Report does not support the majority’s interpretation. Protecting the integrity of federal funds does not require that section 666 only reach bribes worth $5,000 to the federal-fund recipient. According to its plain language, the statute protects the integrity of federal funds by outlawing bribes to agents of the organizations that receive federal funds. As the Fifth Circuit explained, “Congress seeks to preserve the integrity of federal funds by assuring the integrity of the organizations or agencies that receive them.” United States v. Westmoreland, 841 F.2d 572, 578 (5th Cir.1988).
At best, the Judiciary Committee Report is unclear on this question. Thus, it does not impeach the statute’s plain language. “Courts in applying criminal laws generally must follow the plain and unambiguous meaning of the statutory language. ‘[0]nly the most extraordinary showing of contrary intentions’ in the legislative history will justify a departure from that language.” United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 680, 105 S.Ct. 2897, 2902, 86 L.Ed.2d 536 (1985) (citations omitted) (quoting Garcia v. United States, 469 U.S. 70, 75, 105 S.Ct. 479, 482-83, 83 L.Ed.2d 472 (1984)). It is sufficient that Foley was an agent of a government that received $10,000 in federal funds and that he took a bribe involving something worth at least $5,000.
Moreover, even if the statute’s scope were arguable, Foley has forfeited this claim by failing to make it to the trial court and because his omission was not plain error. At trial, Foley never disputed the judge’s charge to convict if his bribes involved “anything of value of $5,000 or more,” and he never claimed that the subject of his bribes must be worth $5,000 to the Connecticut state government.
As the Supreme Court has recently reminded us: “‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right....’ ” United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 731, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1776, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993) (quoting Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 444, 64 S.Ct. 660, 677, 88 L.Ed. 834 (1944)). Thus, we remedy an unclaimed error only if it is “plain,” id., “an error so egregious and obvious as to make the trial judge and prosecutor derelict in *496permitting it, despite the defendant’s failure to object.” United States v. Tillem, 906 F.2d 814, 825 (2d Cir.1990).
Foley’s failure to object to the jury charge was not plain error. It was neither egregious nor obvious; under the most plausible reading of the statute, it was not even error. The jury charge tracked the exact language of the statute, and it was consistent with our decisions, although they have yet to address a claim like Foley’s. See United States v. Bonito, 57 F.3d 167 (2d Cir.1995); United States v. Coyne, 4 F.3d 100 (2d Cir.1993).
Moreover, other courts in this Circuit have rejected Foley’s argument. The Southern and Western Districts of New York have both concluded that such bribes need not involve something worth $5,000 to the recipient of the federal money. See United States v. Vona, 842 F.Supp. 1534, 1536 (W.D.N.Y.1994) (concluding that “the statute does not require ... the loss to the victim [the state government] to be $5,000 or more- as long as the overall transaction or the target of the bribe is valued at $5,000 or more....”); United States v. Mongelli, 794 F.Supp. 529 (S.D.N.Y.1992).
Foley’s case is similar to Mongelli, in which the defendant bribed state officials to obtain certain licenses. The defendant argued that his bribes were not covered by section 666 because the licenses were not worth $5,000 to the state. The court rejected this argument, holding that
[t]he $5,000 triggering provision should ... be interpreted as intended to require that substantial matters of that actual value be involved, not that the agency be at risk of losing that amount.
This interpretation reflects the plain meaning of the statute, which does not refer to pecuniary loss to the agency. Section 666 does not require that the $5,000 “involved” be measured in terms of value to the agency....
Mongelli 794 F.Supp. at 530. Mongelli’s holding underscores that Foley’s failure to make the same objection at his trial was not plain error.
Furthermore, Foley’s failure to object prejudiced the government. Had Foley asserted in the trial court the argument he now raises on appeal, the prosecution could have put on proof that Foley was guilty even under the standard he now proposes. The prosecution could have shown that his bribes did involve something worth at least. $5,000 to the state government.
The trial court in this case charged the jury according to the plain language of the statute, consistent with our holdings, and the same way that other trial courts in this Circuit have interpreted it. This charge was correct. At the very least, Foley’s failure to challenge it was not plain error. I would affirm his conviction.
As I believe that Foley took illegal bribes, I would affirm his convictions for assisting and conspiring to assist in the preparation of tax returns that deducted those bribes as business expenses. But even if Foley’s bribery conviction is reversed as beyond the scope of section 666,1 believe his tax convictions should be affirmed.
Foley provided invoices stating that he was paid for “clienVtenant services.” The payments, however, were actually in return for Foley’s influencing other legislators’ votes in the state legislature. Nevertheless, these payments were deducted from tax returns as legitimate, “ordinary and necessary” business expenses.
The trial court charged that “[m]oney paid to a public official for a corrupt purpose is not a legitimate expense and a taxpayer is not allowed to deduct such payments as business expenses.” This charge carefully steered clear of stating that the payments had to be illegal in order to convict. Nevertheless, the majority “[a]ssum[es] that use of the phrase ‘for a corrupt purpose’ ... was a sufficient surrogate for the objective requirement that the bribe ... be ‘illegal’-” Therefore, it holds that the jury may have convicted Foley on the tax counts only because it found that his actions were illegal under section 666.
I disagree. The jury was only required to find that the payments were not ordinary and necessary business expenses, and the court charged that one way to find this was to determine that the payments were made *497to a public official for a corrupt purpose, The government provided ample evidence that these payments were made for a corrupt purpose, regardless of whether they fortuitously escaped the reach of the federal bribery statute. I would also affirm the convictions for assisting and conspiring to assist in the filing of a false tax return.

. S.Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 2d Sess. 369-70 (1984), reprinted in 1984 USCCAN 3510-11.

. S.Rep. No. 225 at 369, reprinted in 1984 USCCAN 3510.