wilkes

James Snyder, a former small-town mayor in Indiana, may be an example of just such a politician. He awarded city contracts to a trucking company. He then ran into financial problems and went to that trucking company asking for money. The trucking company obliged and paid him $13,000 for consulting work that never came to fruition.

But the federal law may provide an escape hatch for Snyder. The federal law bars state and local officials from "corruptly" soliciting, demanding, accepting or agreeing to accept anything valued more than $5,000 while "intending to be influenced or rewarded" for an official act. We know that the statute punishes quid pro quo agreements to take an official act in the future. But does it go further? It largely depends on how broadly or narrowly "corruptly" is defined.

It is no surprise then that the correct definition of the word "corruptly" took up much of oral arguments. The government argued that corruption includes knowing that what you're doing is "unlawful" or "wrongful" or possessing a "consciousness of wrongdoing." Snyder argued that corruption means something different, "deliberately and wrongfully agreeing to a quid pro quo."