As the rest of the nation ponders the implications of the USSC decision narrowing “honest services” to cases involving alleged bribes and kick-backs, our friends in Louisiana stand ready to open what agriculture giant “ConAgra thinks… is the first factory dedicated to sweet potatoes in North America”.
In Skilling v. United States, Justice Ginsburg’s majority opinion acknowledged that in prior case law there was “considerable disarray” about what it means to deprive omeone of honest services, at least at the outer boundaries of the doctrine. But six justices agreed that at its core, the doctrine clearly prohibits schemes involving bribes and kickbacks. The prototypical honest-services fraud case, according to the Court, involves a public official who accepts a bribe or kickback from a third party in exchange for awarding a contract; even if the government incurs no tangible loss, it has been deprived of the official’s honest services…The implications of the Court’s holding that the honest-services theory of mail fraud encompasses only bribery and kickbacks are significant, to say the least. The government should expect an avalanche of legal challenges on both direct and collateral review. Any defendant whose conviction possibly rests on an honest- Continue reading “Louisiana readies for change in "honest services" with new "sweet potato" processing plant”
