Convicted College Parent Will Appeal

Mandel said, no one is above the law. They and their families enjoy privileges and opportunities that most of us can only imagine. Yet they were willing to break the law, and the jury has now found that they did break the law. The prosecutors had introduced powerful evidence, including secretly recorded phone calls between the two men and Rick Singer,

the ringleader of the scheme. I can send him your five hundred thousand that you wired into my account to secure the spot for one of your girl joining me, is Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtano, who covered the trial. So pat, how long was the jury out? Well? The jury deliberated just a little over ten hours over two days, and it was a categorical win for the government. They convicted both of these dads who were accused of paying bribes to get their kids into elite schools. Convicted of

every single count. There was one question from the jury, and it was a complicated charge encompassing the concept of the parents paid bribe to corrupt people, and by doing this bribing, they robbed the colleges of the honest services of their employees to do their job properly and not give slots to kids whose parents paid bribes. And the judge basically gave the jury on the smartest board of opportunities to convict them just on that one count alone.

The jury found guilty on everything. The account I was quite stunning. Um. The defense had argued vociferously that they had not paid bribe and if they had paid money, they understood them to be quote unquote donations to these schools. So they said, this corrupt college counselor named William Rick Singer, who had played guilty and agreed to cooperate against them, he was the con man who had lied to them and misled them about what the true function of the

money was going to be. The prosecutors managed to get this verdict even without the testimony of the mastermind. How did that go? Well, what they did is they did play the wire taps of these parents discussing Lip Singer their plan. And John Wilson is the equity executive and he was on tape talking to Singer about possibly arranging to pay five thousand dollars for each of his two daughters, so a million dollars to facilitate his daughter's entrants into

Stanford and Harvard. And then he asked if he could get a two for one deal, so he was haggling for a discount, so he didn't want to pay more than a million, and the government said that was showing his willingness to engage in a dirty deal. And the other dad, Gamal abdel Aziz, and he's a former Win

Resorts executive. He was on tape talking to Singer. Singer actually was bragging to him that he wanted to use this fake profile that they used to get his daughter into USC as they purported basketball star, that he wanted to use it for other fake athletes. And Adela Zis chuckles and says, I love it. So the government said this is the true understanding these two parents had that

they knowingly understood that Singer was corrupting the process. The judge made some evidentially rulings that seemed like points on appeal what the government did in this case, and the judge allowed it as he allowed the prosecutors to put in evidence from other parents, including emails, And then they called one of these dads who played guilty. His name is Bruce Isaacson. He's a Northern California businessman. He and his wife played guilty to pay bribes to Singer to

get their kids into college. This dad testified about his mindset, so the government said, you can infer from the testimony of this other dad with these two dads were thinking. The defense vociferously argued against this. They said it's unfair. Some of the evidence that the defense argued shouldn't have been seen by this jury because it had nothing to

do with these defendants. For example, prosecutors show jurors conversations and emails with other parents like Felicity Huffman or Lly Laughlin and her husband about their kids that had nothing to do with these two defendants kids, and all set wire taps of other parents talking to Singer which they said had nothing to do with their clients, and the judge also limited the evidence that the defendants could bring

in to make their case right. The defender wanted to bring in more evidence of what exactly was going on at these schools, and they really went after USC, the University of Southern California, and they had this v I P List which they showed the jury which had all these students that were admitted as a similar kind of recruited athletes or they're called walk on, So they're not the actual star athletes that are you know, national champions, but they are students who get in and they get

to be on the team as like the manager or second string for example. And so these two parents would argued they should be allowed to show this transactional aspect college admissions is about. At USC, they argued that USC admitted kids, and they had evidence in this the spreadsheet of kids that parents had given donations, including a kid whose parents gave USC five million dollars and the kid got admitted as a quote unquote walk on tennis recruit.

But the judge rejected their ability to call USC Athletics department officials to really inquire and explore this. You know, money talks in the admissions process, and the judge that usc was not on trial, so the only thing that could really bring out was if you're a recruited athlete, you have like anne chance of admission. Some of these kids actually get admitted when there's sophomores in high school and they get a promise of admissions, of guaranteed admission

in sophomore year in high school. You did a story that there was a debate within the prosecutor's office about whether the target singer the mastermind, or use him to go after the wealthy parents. And usually prosecutors go up the ladder. In this case they went down the ladder.

Judge Nancy Gertner, who is a retired federal judge in Boston, and she's a professor at Harvard Law School, and she was saying, that is like using the drug kingpin to have them played guilty and testify against his clients, the people who buy the drugs rand. This is kind of backwards in the philosophy. Now, there was a raging debate.

I spoke to Andrew Welling, who was the Bostons attorney who led the office when they were putting this case together, and he said they decided that it would make a begger impression against the corrupt parents instead of having a learn off case and just going after Singer and have him get convicted and then maybe you might be able

to implicate one or two parents. But they decided to go big and make a big, splashy case against all these parents because under their philosophy, if this national scandal got exposed, it may deter other parents from a perk walk or prison jumpsuit. So interesting, thanks, Pat. That's Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado. The two fathers are facing years in prison at sentencing, in contrast to the parents who pled guilty and served only months in prison. This is

Bloomberg Law with June Bresso from Bloomberg Radio. This week, the Body Administration was at the Supreme Court arguing to reinstate the death sentence for Joe hars Or Nayev, the man convicted of setting off one of the bombs that killed three people at the Boston marathon. That's despite President

Biden's opposition to the death penalty. The main issue was whether the trial judge should have admitted evidence of a triple murder allegedly committed by Sarnajev's older brother, Tamerlin, in order to show sar Naiev was acting under the influence of his brother. The justices were sharply divided down ideological lines. Here are Jonas Says, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh. This court let in evidence about tamer Lane poking somebody in the chest. This court led an evidence about tamer Lane

shouting at people. This court led an evidence about Tamerlane assaulting a former student, a fellow student, all because that showed what kind of person Tamerlane was and what kind of influence he might have had over his brother. And yet this court kept out evidence that tamer Land led a crime that that resulted in three murders. And the

district Court said, we don't know what happened. There's been insufficient evidence of who did what, and therefore the theory that Tamerlane was the lead player in that is entirely unull is unreliable because we don't know when Tadashev had all the motive in the world to point the finger at the dead guy. There was even a tense exchange between the two justices. I just want to make sure the premise. I mean the premise was assumed away. The

premise was assumed away because that's the role of the jury. Well, I think it's important to discuss the distrec court's reasoning. Joining me to analyze the arguments is John Bloom, a professor at Cornell Law School and director of the Corneill Death Penalty Project. So, John, why did the Court of Appeals throw out Sarnayev's death sentence? The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit left undisturbed the guilty convictions,

but reversed the death sentence on two independent bases. The first was that the judge and made a legal error in refusing to either question or allow the lawyers to question the jurors about the content of the pre tropicality

to which they've been exposed to during the trial. The second basis was that the First Circuit determined that the trial judge should have allowed evidence that Scenariev's brother previously committed to several homicides in Massachusetts, and they wanted to admit that evidence of proof that brother had been previously radicalized and was acting on his radicalized beliefs, and that he's the one who radicalized the scenariev and he was the primary planner of the crimes. They wanted to use

that evocace. It went to basically their theory at the case was that Snario was the least culpable the two brothers. His brother was planned and included and groomed him to participate. Here, the Biden administration is arguing to reinstate the death sentence. When Biden ran on ending the federal death penalty and in July the Attorney General placed a moratorium on federal executions, why do you suppose the Biden administration is taking this position. Well,

I mean, there is some mystery to it. In theory, you could draw a distinction between saying we're not going to pursue the death only going forward, We're not going to allow any executions going forward, but nevertheless, we're not going to try and disturb previous convictions and descindances which have been imposed. I think some of it is because they didn't actually seek surceerarias the Trump administration that asked the government to review the decision of the First Circuit.

The Supreme Court had already made that decision when Biden became president, and maybe they just didn't want to withdraw it at the time, but there definitely is some head scratching and long about some of them. There was only one Justice Amy Coney Barrett, that raised this issue. Mr Fagan.

I'm wondering what the government's end game is here. So the government has declared a moratorium on executions, but you're here defending his death sentences and if you win, presumably that means that he is relegated to living under the threat of a death sentence that the government doesn't plan to carry out. Well, let me she's right about that. Technically that's not legally relevant to the question for the court. But you could ask the same question about well, why

they take it. This case wouldn't normally meet the rules for surerari review. It's not an issue about which the lower court in either, one about which there was some confusion about. The Court historically has said we don't engage in error correction. We don't decide to hear cases just because we think the lower court got it wrong. There's got to be some so overarching legal rule mistake that needs clarification or revision. Less not an issue here either.

So they clearly granted hurt in this case primarily for the purpose, most likely because the majority of them don't like the result of air circuit reached. The bulk of the argument concerned the judge's failure to admit the evidence of the triple murder. What were the justice's main concerns? Well, the conservative justice has raised some questions about, well, was the evidence reliable? Do we really know what Tamerlin did?

To come back to that as well, they used the same evidence that Scenarios lawyers wanted to present a trial as basis to convince a judge there was probable costs to conduct a search. So they were saying with the government here said it was reliable in one context. But yet when scenario and admitted his trial, they said he could admit it. Some of the more conservative justice as well, you know, this would turn into a mini trial and

what he did? You know? And who did what? I mean, I think that concern was overblown, But nevertheless it was stated some of the liberal justices, like Justice Elena Kagan, we're trying to make a case for having that evidence be admitted. Justice Kagan said it was a classic case

for resolution by a jury. Well, I mean, I think her point there was, Yeah, Okay, So a jury should have been permitted to consider this and come to their own conclusion about whether the defense theory about who radicalized too and who was the primary planner of this was right or wrong, and whether it would make a difference than whether he should be sentenced to death or not.

I think the defense point is, well, what to judge deprived the jury of the opportunity to decide both what the brother did and what was its legal significance in terms of determining the defendants moral culpability. Why do you think there was so little talk about the second part of the First Circuits concerns, which is that the judge didn't sufficiently question jurors about their exposure to extensive pre trial publicity. Well, I think primarily because that was the

weaker of the two links in the First Circuits decisions. Generally, we give trialject just a lot of discretion on what you hear about publicity to sort of manage the trial. There's been a number of different high profile trials, you know, over the years, and the Supreme Courts repeatedly said, like the trial judges kind of their he or sheet is in the best place to decide what the move is and what the effect of this is. Normally, you know, the courts of helic courts are kind of reluctant to

micro manage that. So I think both sides seem to believe that the more difficult question was should be evidence a bit admitted of the triple homicide? So does it appear as if there are six votes to reverse the first circuit and reinstate the death penalty. I mean, if all you were doing was listening to the oral argument, I think that was the only be consider you would say, I think that most likely the Supreme Court is going

to reverse. But of course, you know the Supreme Court is most likely to reverse from the fact that they grant certain when they grant her ferrari, they grant sir to reverse about eighty percent of the time, just the pure statistics of it. They see a little where they think a lower court got it right, they don't usually decide to hear the case, so they can say, okay, first Circuit, we just want you to know with the

you're doing a hell of a job there. So just from that you would know that most life that the Government's going to prevail if you just listen to the oral argument, you would think, Okay, the government's a pretty good chance they're going to prevail. But you know, there have been a number of cases where they didn't turn out exactly like people anticipated in oral argument, and this, you know, potentially could be one of them. It's one

thing to sort of ask questions advantage. It's another to sit down and write an opinion in the case that makes sense and you can square with prod pressed. So let's say sar Nayev wins at the Supreme Court. What would happen then? Then I think the government would have to decide are they going to retry and or are they just going to allow him to service sentence of life without parole. I mean, I think it's important to

bear in mind that his conviction is intact. He's going to be in prison for the rest of his life no matter what. It's just a question of whether his time in prison is going to end from a natural death or from a death by execution. If the government wins, are there other appeal that Sarnayev could press. Yes, he hasn't been through what we normally would call federal post conviction review or twifty five proceedings, so they would still need to be additional proceedings to look at the quality

of the representation. Was he denied the rights of the effective since the council, Was there any type of prosecutorial misconduct we don't know about, and things like that. So even if he loses and this appeal, there still will be multiple years of litigation before they don't even leave a question of whether the destance Gond be carried out. When you say multiple years, are are we talking like a decade on average? Yeah, I would say we're talking

to least a decade. Cases normally moved relatively slowly through post conviction review. There has to be a new team of lawyers is going to have to be appointed. They're gonna have to get up to speed in the case. They're gonna have to be given the opportunity to do an investigation to examine what happened, what trial council didn't didn't do, what the prostitution didn't didn't do. So regards to what happens here, there will be years of litigation.

Our death penalty opponents disappointed that Biden so far has declined to commute federal death row sentences to life in prison. I wouldn't read that much into that either. I mean, normally, you know governors or presidents when they commute sentences, they sort of do it on the way out of office

as opposed to on the way in. When you've seen that at the state level, when there's been like significant numbers of commutations when there was in Illinois, and the governors have usually done that near the end of their term. So again I wouldn't read too much into that either. Thanks so much for being on the Bloomberg Laws Show. That's Professor John bloom director of the Corneilled Death Penalty Project, And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show.

Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcasts Slash Law, and remember to join us weeknights at ten pm Wall Street Time for the Bloomberg Law Show. Oh I'm June Basso, and you're listening to Bloomberg