No, corruption isn't 'just politics' (Editorial)

June 27, 2011: Jurors convict Rod Blagojevich on 17 counts of public corruption. In essence, those jurors reject the defrocked governor's suggestion that, during conversations recorded by the FBI, he was engaging in routine politics rather than a self-serving crime spree. The trial outcome leaves Blagojevich likely to serve many years in federal prison.

 

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July 6, 2011: A panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejects arguments from attorneys for George Ryan, a former Illinois governor already in federal prison, that his conviction for public corruption should not stand. In upholding a lower court's finding against Ryan, the three judges say a conclusion that he had accepted bribes or kickbacks "verges on the inescapable. The district court's opinion canvasses the evidence and demonstrates why a reasonable jury could find that Ryan sold his offices to the high bidders."

 

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During much of Patrick Fitzgerald's decade as U.S. attorney in Chicago, some Illinois pols have waged a plaintive whispering campaign with journalists and anyone else who would listen:

 

Fitzgerald's office is criminalizing politics! Public officials trade favors! Always have, always will!

 

This self-exculpatory rationale for politicians' illicit behavior has, over time, become the defense of choice in Illinois public corruption cases. The Blagojevich and Ryan trials, the federal convictions of Ryan sidekick Scott Fawell and Mayor Richard M. Daley acolyte Robert Sorich — defense attorneys in these and other prosecutions have tried to aw-pshaw their way past the damning evidence by peddling versions of a soothing mantra:

 

This defendant is guilty of nothing more than politics as usual. All public officials help people who help them. This is just the game — not the serious crimes these prosecutors would have you believe.

 

But the mantra isn't working. Jurors and judges are having no trouble distinguishing between genuine exercises in political activity and blatant violations of federal laws. "I was one where I felt he was not guilty on several counts," juror Maribel DeLeon of West Dundee said after helping to convict Blagojevich. "But, lo and behold, we would go back through the tapes and there it was. I'd say, 'Ah, Rod.' It hurt me. How could I say not guilty when the evidence was there?"

 

No agonizing there about whether Blagojevich was Mr. Just-Politics.