Janison: Law that pegged Bruno should be put on trial
Other Columnists
We have all seen how political shills and righteous advocates will flog a single fact or idea to get a prescribed message out.
Forget them, and remember this: You can believe more than one fact or idea at the same time, even if it is banned under the sporting rules of sound-bite punditry.
It makes you neither a cynic nor a hater to think of Joseph Bruno, former Senate majority leader, as a self-serving operator who used state staff as personal help, and his elected status as a prop for his own profits.
You can feel humane, but you can also think that Bruno deserved - even at 80 - to face some penalty that might come with this week's federal felony conviction.
But you need not be from, say, a law firm called Boodle, Crime & Graft to contend that Bruno's age and civic esteem should be considered in sentencing.
You can be realistic - yet also harbor hope that this shock wave could force lawmakers to really disclose who pays them for what on the side.
You can be satisfied that glaring details finally came out in sworn testimony on how Bruno wheeled and dealed out of his Senate office with unions and business partners.
You can believe that his GOP conference indulged Bruno's perceived conflicts of interest for way too long - and simultaneously suspect that the Democrats have their own supply of skeletons still to be rattled.
You can believe that enemies-to-the-end Eliot Spitzer and Joe Bruno were both right - about each other.
You can speculate that the Bruno jury did an honest job by listening to and re-examining different counts in the indictment, finally reaching agreement to convict on two of the eight federal counts.
And despite all that, you may believe that the federal "honest services" fraud statute - the tool employed against Bruno and a raft of other famous defendants from business and politics - is dangerously drafted.
The crime as currently defined: "To deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."
You could consider yourself a civil libertarian - and agree strongly with a dissent issued by none other than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The honest services statute, Scalia once wrote, "has been invoked to impose criminal penalties upon a staggeringly broad swath of behavior." In principle, it "would seemingly cover a salaried employee's phoning in sick to go to a ballgame," he said.
As it happens, while Bruno's team prepares his appeal, the Supreme Court began just Tuesday to put the whole "honest services" statute on trial by hearing oral arguments in two relevant cases.
In one, former newspaper magnate Conrad Black was convicted of "honest services" fraud in a 2007 trial. Charges involved diversion of corporate funds for personal use.
In the other case, Bruce Weyhrauch, a former state representative and lawyer in Alaska, tried to get legal business from an oil company while the State Legislature debated a tax bill involving the firm.
The Bruno forces have some reason to hope for outside help: The high court struck down a previous version of the statute in 1987.
Maybe citizens can root, at the same time, for two reforms: of the entitled Capitol climate that Joe Bruno helped foster, and of the law that snared him.
