The seemingly endless parade of Illinois politicians who face sentencing at Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse has led over the years to a popular defense argument — that sending a corrupt politician to prison won’t stop the next one.
The argument was most recently made by a lawyer for ex-state Rep. Luis Arroyo, who wrote in a court memo that Arroyo was “undeterred” by prior news reports about criminally charged politicians, and that prison “is no more effective than draining Lake Michigan with a spoon.”
Earlier this year, the lawyer for ex-Ald. Ricardo Munoz noted that “the courts see governor after governor, legislator after legislator, alderman after alderman, county board member after board member, continuing to engage in the same behavior …. Most likely, because the universal belief or hope is ‘I won’t get caught.’”
So twice Friday, federal prosecutors in Chicago found themselves quoting in court memos the same words spoken by a judge eight years ago this month, during the sentencing of former Cook County Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno for an extortion conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman handed Moreno an 11-year prison sentence Feb. 19, 2014, noting that the cost-benefit calculation for corrupt Illinois politicians “has been skewed.”
“The court can’t do anything about the likelihood of getting caught,” Feinerman said. “That’s up to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney and law enforcement. But the court can do something … about the sanction that is imposed.”
“And the way to do that,” Feinerman said, “is to impose more severe penalties than have been imposed in the past.”
As it happened, the prosecutors’ memos in the Munoz and Arroyo cases both were due Friday. They landed just days before a sitting member of the Chicago City Council — Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson — is set to go on trial at the federal courthouse Monday. On Tuesday, a long-awaited hearing is set to take place in the criminal case of Ald. Edward M. Burke.
The feds asked U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger to sentence Arroyo to roughly four or five years in prison. Arroyo pleaded guilty to wire fraud in November. The charges in his case allege he spent roughly a year as a bought-and-paid-for member of the Illinois House of Representatives for businessman James Weiss.
Weiss is the son-in-law of former Cook County Democratic Party chairman and ex-county assessor Joseph Berrios. Arroyo’s case also revealed former state Sen. Terry Link as a government cooperator.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James Durkin addressed Arroyo’s argument that prison time won’t curb public corruption, calling it “a depressingly cynical perspective from a man who just a few years ago was a senior member of the Illinois House of Representatives.”
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Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Morris Pasqual asked for a year in prison for Munoz, who admitted he took thousands from the Chicago Progressive Reform Caucus to pay for personal expenses like skydiving and a relative’s college tuition.
Pasqual wrote in his memo that Munoz once texted an acquaintance that “a wise man” told him after he became alderman that, “they will throw money at u they will throw trips and cars at u and they will throw very pretty young p---y at you.” He said the man told him “don’t take any of it” and instead “pick ur 10 friends and make them millionaires and they will take care of u legally.” Munoz noted that the “wise man” wound up being indicted for tax evasion.
The feds asked U.S. District Judge John Kness “to send the proper message to [Munoz], the public, and all elected officials in this district that the costs of corruption are severe and will outweigh any perceived benefit derived from abusing a position of power and breaking the law for personal gain.”
Arroyo is due to be sentenced Feb. 18. Munoz’s sentencing has not been scheduled.
