The U.S. Supreme Courtroom on Friday sided with former Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, discovering {that a} regulation he’d been convicted underneath outlaws false statements however not deceptive ones, as his attorneys have lengthy argued.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous opinion, which doesn’t overturn Thompson’s conviction however undoes a later ruling from the seventh U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals affirming it. Roberts on Friday despatched the case again to the appellate court docket and instructed it to provide it one other look.
A jury discovered Thompson responsible in February 2022 of two counts of mendacity to regulators and 5 counts of submitting false revenue tax returns. The conviction ended his tenure because the eleventh Ward’s consultant on the Chicago Metropolis Council.
Thompson is the grandson of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and the nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley. Thompson’s uncle, William Daley, served as chief of employees to President Barack Obama.
U.S. District Choose Franklin Valderrama sentenced the inheritor to the Daley political dynasty to 4 months in jail. Thompson has already served his time, and his enchantment revolved solely round claims that he made false statements to regulators.
“We’re very gratified that the Supreme Courtroom adopted the arguments that we’ve been attempting to persuade the Justice Division of all alongside, and possibly they’ll take this to coronary heart,” stated Chris Gair, Thompson’s protection lawyer.
The query Thompson raised on the Supreme Courtroom principally amounted to “when is a lie a lie?” On Friday, Roberts used the case to proceed the excessive court docket’s pattern of placing restraints on federal prosecutors.
“In informal dialog, folks use many overlapping phrases to explain shady statements: false, deceptive, dishonest, misleading, actually true, and extra,” Roberts wrote. “Solely a kind of phrases seems within the statute. [The law] doesn’t criminalize statements which are deceptive however true.
“Below the statute, it’s not sufficient {that a} assertion is deceptive. It have to be ‘false.’”
In a concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that whereas the excessive court docket rejected an appellate ruling in Thompson’s case, the jury that initially convicted Thompson was correctly instructed.
“Whether or not Thompson’s statements had been, in actual fact, false is a query for the jury — and right here, one the jury has already answered,” Jackson wrote.
The case in opposition to Thompson revolved round $219,000 he acquired between 2011 and 2014 from Washington Federal Financial institution for Financial savings in Bridgeport. Thompson acquired a $110,000 mortgage from the financial institution in November 2011. He then acquired a further $20,000 in March 2013 and $89,000 in January 2014.
The financial institution was shut down in December 2017 amid allegations of huge fraud, days after its president was discovered useless in a financial institution buyer’s $1 million dwelling.
Thompson paid no curiosity on the mortgage, based on the feds. However he falsely claimed deductions for mortgage curiosity purportedly paid to the financial institution on his tax returns for the years 2013 by way of 2017. He was additionally convicted of mendacity in early 2018 because the Federal Deposit Insurance coverage Corp. sought to get well the cash he borrowed.
The FDIC employed Planet Residence Lending to gather on Thompson’s loans, information present. It despatched him an bill in February 2018 stating his stability was $269,120 — the principal of $219,000 plus curiosity.
Thompson known as the customer support line and stated, “I borrowed $100,000. … I imply, I borrowed the cash, I owe the cash — however I borrowed $100 thou—$110—I feel it was $110,000. … I need to shortly resolve all this, and — and — , what I owe.”
Thompson learn the quantity on the bill and stated, “I dispute that.”
When he was convicted, the jury discovered that Thompson falsely said that he “solely owed $110,000,” information present.
“Patrick Thompson was convicted … for stating that he borrowed $110,000 and that he disputed owing $269,000,” Gair and lawyer Stuart Banner instructed the Supreme Courtroom. “These statements weren’t false. He did borrow $110,000 and he did dispute owing $269,000.”
