Former Portage Mayor James Snyder appeals 2nd bribery conviction; says most recent trial wasn’t fair
POST-TRIBUNE
APR 20, 2021
In two court documents totaling more than 100 pages, former Portage Mayor James Snyder is requesting an acquittal and a third trial on a federal charge involving a $13,000 payment for allegedly steering a contract for garbage trucks.
Snyder has been convicted twice on the charge in U.S. District Court in Hammond. His February 2019 conviction came during a trial in which a jury also convicted him of defrauding the IRS, in a charge unrelated to city business, and found him not guilty on a bribery charge involving the city’s tow truck contract.
He sought and received a second trial on the charge involving the garbage trucks and was convicted again last month. Snyder is scheduled for sentencing July 1 before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois, the third judge to oversee the case.
This time around, Snyder, 43, a Republican who served as Portage’s mayor from January 2012 through his first conviction, is asking for an acquittal because prosecutors “left an evidentiary void at the heart of the case” and is asking for another trial because “the retrial in this matter did not meet the fundamental requirement of fairness,” according to court documents filed Monday.
Jury deliberations took less than two hours in Snyder’s most recent trial, which was granted to provide Snyder’s defense team the opportunity to question bothers Robert and Steve Buha, former owners of Great Lakes Peterbilt.
The Buha brothers provided Snyder with a $13,000 check after receiving the city’s contract for garbage trucks, worth $1.25 million. The payment was reportedly for consulting services for information technology and navigating the Affordable Care Act for health insurance.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Koster argued during last month’s two-week trial that there was no proof that Snyder did the work he was contracted for or was qualified to do it, while defense attorney Jackie Bennett said the payment wasn’t a bribe because Snyder didn’t attempt to conceal it.
Robert Buha testified for the defense that Snyder initially asked for a loan because he was strapped for cash before they agreed on the consulting work. He told the court that a contract for the work wasn’t written up and Snyder never gave the documents or presentations of the work he did.
“There is insufficient evidence from which a jury could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Snyder and the Buhas reached a corrupt deal to rig the bids in exchange for a payment,” court documents on the acquittal state. “Thus, there is insufficient evidence to sustain a finding that Mr. Snyder accepted a reward.”
The motion for a new trial notes that the first jury verdict on the bribery charge was overturned because of “irregularities” in the prosecution’s conduct.
“One might expect that a prosecution insisting on a second trial would be beyond reproach in its conduct and tactics at that trial; but that was not the case,” that document states. “Mr. Snyder acknowledges that no one is guaranteed a perfect trial, just a fair one.”
The documents for the acquittal and the new trial both note the testimony of Randall Evans, a former Indiana Department of Insurance employee, who defense attorneys said was used by prosecutors in the first trial to falsely claim that Snyder needed to register with that department “to provide advice, for money, about the Affordable Care Act.”
Defense attorneys requested that prosecutors not be permitted to introduce Evans’s testimony contradicting the law but the court denied the request. Instead, documents state, the court instructed the jury to disregard Evans’s testimony.
“The prosecution’s only purpose in calling Evans as a witness was to cast doubt on Mr. Snyder’s claim that the justification for the $13,000 check at the center of the case was that he had provided advice, for a fee, regarding the ACA to the Buhas and (Great Lakes Peterbilt),” documents said.
Additionally, Snyder’s attorneys said in court filings that “the prosecution’s constant flow of discovery materials — during the middle of the trial” warranted a new trial because the late filings hampered the defense’s ability to work on Snyder’s case.
From one week before trial through the end of trial prosecutors produced an additional 1,114 page of material, the filing states, which doesn’t include the thousands of pages of material produced within two weeks of the trial.
While the defense excluded much of the newly produced evidence, “it still hampered Mr. Snyder’s and his counsel’s ability to defend the case; every time the prosecution produced material, we reviewed it. And every hour of the many hours spent doing so was an hour not spent working on the case.”
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