Big Jim's Laws

In the three years that he has been the U.S. Attorney for northern Illinois, James ("Big Jim") Thompson has won convictions of 239 errant politicians, cops and other public servants. Currently another 40 are under indictment; having put eleven different grand juries to work in recent months, Thompson cautiously predicts that 1975 "could be our biggest year." Big Jim's impressive score reflects the fact that he works in an area exceptionally rich in corruption. In addition, he and his aides have honed sharp weapons out of two statutes often overlooked by federal prosecutors.

Committed to cracking down on official corruption when he took the job, Thompson was well aware that such cases often present complicated proof problems. Bribery, conflict-of-interest and conspiracy prosecutions usually contain gray areas easily exploited by defense attorneys. Then Samuel Skinner, now Thompson's chief deputy, came across a 1941 case in Louisiana in which a federal mail-fraud statute was used to prosecute former associates of Huey Long. The defendants had happened to use the mail in the collection of inflated fees for a bond deal. Thompson's men looked closely and with growing delight. The law provided a maximum sentence of $1,000 and five years for anyone who used the mail in any "scheme or artifice to defraud."

Members of Congress who wrote the basic language in 1909 had bad checks and phony mail-order offers in mind, but Thompson's staff concluded that people could be defrauded out of their "right to honest government" as well. Trial and appeal courts agreed, as Thompson proceeded to use mail-fraud charges in the successful prosecutions of former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, four Chicago aldermen, the former clerk of Cook County, Mayor Richard Daley's former press secretary and others.

Mailed Profits. To take advantage of the mail statute, the prosecution needed only to prove that the U.S. postal service was used to further a fraudulent act. Former mayoral Press Secretary Earl Bush, for example, was nailed for neglecting to reveal his ownership of an advertising company that held major contracts with O'Hare International Airport. Bush's $202,000 in profits from the company were mailed to him.

Another old law in which Thompson found new possibilities was a 1934 extortion statute, originally aimed at strong-arm labor racketeers, which carries a 20-year maximum sentence. Big Jim turned the statute into a particularly potent law-enforcement weapon in a major 1973 case in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Previously, prosecutors had expended considerable effort proving, say, that a policeman who had extorted payments from a tavern owner had used fear of violence or harassment to force his victim to pay. The appeals court bought Thompson's argument that the law did not deal only with fear of physical harm, but could be interpreted as covering threatened economic damage as well. Another decision held that merely obtaining money improperly under "color of official right" was enough to establish extortion. With those decisions, the standard defense that the questionable deal had been a friendly, voluntary arrangement all but vanished.

Neat Concept. Now, says Thompson, the government can prosecute for extortion as well as for the lesser offense of bribery "and let the jury decide." So far juries have decided to convict 52 Chicago cops under the extortion laws and 32 suburban officials who got kickbacks for zoning favors.

Critics complain that Thompson has created new legislation. The mail-fraud statute, says Attorney James Coghlan, who defended Bush, "is in the nature of an ex post facto law." Warren Wolfson, who represented a Kerner codefendant, adds that with the current unpopularity of officials, "the danger is that the power to indict is becoming the same as the power to convict." But Thompson's people are undeterred. "It is a very easy way to prosecute," agrees Anton Valukas, chief of Thompson's special investigation division. The laws may not have been originally meant for the purpose that they now serve, but both happen to frame neatly the concept that by misusing their public position, officials are cheating the people. That is something jurors can grasp easily.

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