The Supreme Court handed down a decision Monday that overturned former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell’s corruption conviction in both the District and Appeals court — but McDonnell’s fate is far from decided.
When McDonnell was first convicted last year, the prosecution relied heavily on a broad definition of the term “official action.” The central question was if McDonnell sold official actions for money, but based on the interpretation of “official actions,” McDonnell’s actions may have been legal.
Investigators discovered that McDonnell and his wife received over $175,000 in personal loans and gifts from Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams during the four years McDonnell served in office.
The gifts began after conversations Williams had with former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell. Williams testified that the former governor’s wife took meetings with Williams regarding a health supplement the businessman wanted the state to officially endorse through either University of Virginia or Virginia Commonwealth University’s research department. McDonnell uttered the words, “we will help you, but you will need to help us first,” Williams told prosecutors.
This quid pro quo is highly unusual, if not illegal. After McDonnell told Williams about the first couple’s college bills for their daughter, and their financial troubles, Williams asked if he would get certain meetings with officials in return for his help with financial matters.
The case focused on the definition of “official acts.” Bob McDonnell arranged the meetings after he was paid, but the health supplement was not endorsed by the state government pursuant to those meetings, and McDonnell didn’t push the matter further after those meetings took place.
During the original trial last July, prosecutors pushed for a broad interpretation of “official acts,” “acts that a public official customarily performs,” including acts “in furtherance of longer-term goals” or “in a series of steps to exercise influence or achieve an end.”
The key word “influence” caused the jury to convict due to the wide potential interpretation of the word, according to McDonnell’s legal team.
McDonnell’s lawyers pushed for additional instructions for the jury that included the words, “merely arranging a meeting, attending an event, hosting a reception, or making a speech are not, standing alone, ‘official acts,’” the SCOTUS decision stated. The Court declined to add those words.
The biggest factor in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the conviction was its refusal to make the addition to the jury instructions.
Now that the Supreme Court overturned the conviction, the case is returned to the Appeals Court. The SCOTUS clerk’s office has 25 days from Monday to send a copy of the file to the Appeals Court, but prosecutors can make one of three decisions about the case.
The first is to retry the case. The facts of the case are still known, and since prosecutors will go for a different crime, it is possible. Prosecutors would need to change the definition of “official acts” to include “a decision or action on a ‘question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy.'”
Prosecutors have to prove arranging a meeting between a friend and a government official to be a decision or action.
The prosecutors could simply drop the charges.
The third option relies more on the Appeals Court’s decision. The Appeals Court could simply review the case, and ask both the prosecution and the defendant to issue a statement about the Supreme Court decision, and then decide for themselves if McDonnell’s actions meet the bar of the new definition of “official acts.”
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