The Honest Services of Public Officials (Criminal Law Series)

This casebook contains a selection of 81 Federal Court of Appeals decisions that discuss and analyze corruption of the honest services required of officials who hold public office. We also include the full text of the seminal Supreme Court decision, Skilling v. US, 130 S. Ct. 2896 (2010). The selection of decisions spans from 2003 to the date of publication. For each circuit, the cases are listed in the order of frequency of citation. The most cited decisions appear first.

The political-corruption statutes and cases make a few principles in this area clear:

• A public official can commit honest services fraud only by accepting a bribe or a kickback. Skilling, 130 S. Ct. at 2931.

• A public official accepts a bribe when he "corruptly . . . receives. . . anything of value . . . in return for . . . being influenced in the performance of any official act." 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2); see also 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) (similar definition in federal-programs bribery statute); Ohio Rev. Code § 2921.02(b) (similar definition in state bribery statute).

• One element of bribery is that the public official must agree that "his official conduct will be controlled by the terms of the promise or the undertaking." McCormick v. United States, 500 U.S. 257, 273 (1991); see also United States v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 501, 526 (1972) ("The illegal conduct is taking or agreeing to take money for a promise to act in a certain way."); United States v. Allen, 10 F.3d 405, 411 (7th Cir. 1993) (looking to extortion cases to interpret a bribery statute because the two crimes are "different sides of the same coin").

• This agreement must include a quid pro quo—the receipt of something of value "in exchange for an official act." United States v. Sun-Diamond Growers of Cal., 526 U.S. 398, 404-05 (1999).

• The agreement between the public official and the person offering the bribe need not spell out which payments control which particular official acts. Rather, "it is sufficient if the public official understood that he or she was expected to exercise some influence on the payor's behalf as opportunities arose." United States v. Abbey, 560 F.3d 513, 518 (6th Cir. 2009); accord United States v. Jefferson, 674 F.3d 332, 358-59 (4th Cir. 2012); Ryan v. United States, 688 F.3d 845, 852 (7th Cir. 2012); United States v. Ganim, 510 F.3d 134, 147 (2d Cir. 2007). US v. Terry , (6th Cir. 2013)