Judge affirms bribery verdict against former Portage mayor James Snyder
Kokomo Perspective
Aug 13, 2021
HAMMOND — A federal judge is denying former Portage Mayor James E. Snyder’s demands for a new trial or acquittal of his conviction for bribery.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew F. Kennelly ruled Friday Snyder received a fair trial earlier this year.
A federal jury found Snyder guilty March 19 of corruptly soliciting and receiving a $13,000 bribe eight years ago from a Portage truck dealership for steering city business to the firm.
It was the second time a jury found Snyder guilty in two years.
Another federal judge overturned the first bribery verdict on grounds aggressive tactics by federal prosecutors denied Snyder his day in court.
Snyder's defense team made the same pitch after this year’s trial, claiming new errors and prosecutorial misconduct constituted prejudice against the former mayor yet again.
But Judge Kennelly, who presided over the trial in March, disagreed Friday in a 15-page ruling. He denied Snyder’s demands to be acquitted of bribery or granted a third jury trial.
That leaves the 43-year-old Republican facing the prospect of multiple years in prison when he is sentenced, now scheduled to take place Aug. 25.
Voters elected Snyder mayor of Portage, the area’s third largest city, in 2011.
A federal grand jury indicted Snyder in late 2016 on two counts of bribery and one count of corrupt tax interference.
A 2019 jury trial left the case in a state of confusion that took lawyers two years to untangle.
Jurors in 2019 found Snyder guilty of obstructing the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to collect unpaid taxes on a private mortgage company he ran.
Jurors acquitted Snyder of soliciting bribes from city towing firms.
But the same jury found Snyder guilty of soliciting and accepting $13,000 from the owners of Portage’s Great Lakes Peterbilt dealership, longtime political donors to Snyder.
Prosecutors alleged the dealership owners, Steve and Bob Buha, rewarded Snyder in 2014 for steering $1.125 million in city contracts to them the previous year.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Joe Van Bokkelen, who presided over the 2019 jury trial, overturned the trucking bribery count later that same year and bowed out of the case.
Snyder’s defense team successfully complained the prosecution unfairly intimidated the Buha brothers with threats to punish them if they lied on the witness stand.
The brothers took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify at all during the 2019 trial. Judge Van Bokkelen ruled the prosecution’s “gamesmanship” involving the Buhas denied Snyder a fair trial.
That set up a second jury trial, beginning March 8 this year.
The new jury heard essentially the same evidence as the first — in addition to testimony from Robert Buha.
Robert Buha testified in March he felt pressured by Snyder’s demands to be hired as a consultant to the dealership.
The second jury found Snyder guilty March 19 after 10 days of testimony, argument and jury deliberation.
Kennelly, who presided over the March trial, ruled Friday the jury made a rational decision to find Snyder guilty based on the evidence they heard.
The judge said that while the prosecution didn’t direct testimony or documentary evidence that the money was a bribe, they didn’t have to.
He said jurors concluded it was a bribe from the circumstances surrounding the payment — circumstances the prosecution argued were clearly incriminating.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Koster said Snyder’s tax problems left him desperate for money and the Buhas’ dealership was in financial distress over a lack of truck sales.
Witnesses for the prosecution testified Snyder rigged the city’s purchase of new, automated garbage trucks to favor the Buhas inventory of garbage trucks over those of competing trucking vendors.
Buha testified Snyder asked — within weeks of the city garbage truck contracts — for a loan to help cover Snyder’s tax issues and other personal expenses.
When Buha declined the loan, Snyder pitched the idea of being paid by the Buhas for providing their company with health insurance advice.
The truck dealership’s financial officer, Brett Searle, testified Robert Buha directed him to issue a $13,000 check to Snyder’s consulting firm, but Searle testified that Robert Buha told him they were really paying Snyder for an "inside track” on city business.
Snyder didn’t testify at his trial, but the judge said jurors reasonably concluded Snyder lied to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents when he denied wrongdoing over the garbage truck deal during his interview with them years ago.
Snyder’s legal team argued the jury verdict was improperly based on false testimony and speculation.
The judge disagreed, concluding, “The $13,000 was the bribe or reward that Snyder was convicted of corruptly soliciting, demanding, accepting, or agreeing to accept.”
No comments:
Post a Comment