Sheriff of Norfolk

The United States Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of the City of Norfolk sheriff who received decades of benefits in exchange for awarding food and medical services contracts for inmates

McCabe was convicted of 11 federal offenses, including charges of conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, Hobbs Act extortion, and money laundering. In May 2022, McCabe was sentenced to 144 months in prison, plus supervised release.

Evidence

The prosecution established beyond a reasonable doubt that Appleton and Boyle — along with ABL and CCS — supported Sheriff McCabe with an extensive stream of valuable benefits over a period of more than 20 years, totalling at least $261,000, in various forms. Those benefits included multiple cash payments, campaign donations, event tickets, expenses for food, trips, and golf tournaments, plus catering costs for parties and events  hosted by McCabe. And McCabe failed to disclose those and other valuable and illegal benefits, in violation of Virginia law. In exchange for the benefits received, McCabe, as explained above, consistently awarded ABL and CCS the contracts with the Jail, extended the contracts when he had the discretion to do so, and modified the terms of the contracts for the benefit of ABL and CCS.

As to Supreme Court precedent making bribery harder to establish

The ruling that Sheriff McCabe seeks today — that the stream-of-benefits theory of bribery cannot be legally pursued post-McDonnell — would simply reward corrupt bribery schemes that involve multiple exchanges over a period of time, as opposed to the so-called “one-and-done handshake deal.” Sheriff McCabe seems to even suggest that his involvement in bribery schemes spanning more than 20 years should mitigate in his favor. See Br. of Appellant 57 (arguing that McDonnell forecloses prosecution’s “attenuated theory of liability” where stream of benefits and official acts are exchanged for more than two decades). As explained in Jennings, however, “the intended exchange in bribery can be ‘this for these’ or ‘these for these,’ not just ‘this for that.’” See 160 F.3d at 1014. As such, “all that must be shown is that payments were made with the intent of securing a specific type of official action or favor in return.” Id. (emphasis in original).

Thus, we are satisfied that the trial court did not abuse its discretion or err in any of its McDonnell-based Instructions. Because Sheriff McCabe cannot show that the court erred, his challenges to those Instructions fail at the first prong of the plain error test as well.

(Mike Frisch)