The Department of Justice faced a significant challenge in extending its anticorruption efforts when the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Snyder v. United States, opting to leave prosecutions for gratuities to the states. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that the DOJ will persist in its anticorruption endeavors, employing new and innovative legal theories.
In a 6-3 decision on June 26, the court overturned the conviction of James Snyder, the former Mayor of Portage, Indiana, under 18 U.S.C. § 666. Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion, while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, and Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion.
Section 666 prohibits providing anything of value with the intent to “influence or reward” an official concerning a federally-funded program, or accepting a thing of value for such purpose. Snyder accepted $13,000 in consulting payments from a truck dealership after the city purchased over a million dollars worth of trucks from the dealership. He was subsequently arrested, convicted of violating Section 666, and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Though many consider Snyder a bribery case, it is, in fact, a gratuities case aimed at state and local officials. The bribery statue, 18 U.S.C. § 201, covers both bribes (quid pro quo payments) and gratuities (“thank you” payments made post-decision), but it applies solely to federal officials. Federal prosecutors have used various statutes, including honest services fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1346, to tackle public corruption among state and local officials.
In Snyder, prosecutors attempted to broaden their anticorruption toolkit by using Section 666 to convict a local official for accepting a gratuity. This section applies to any official of a state or local agency that receives federal funding, and it bans officials from accepting things of value with the intent “to influence or reward” related to a transaction. Prosecutors argued that the term “rewarded” encompasses gratuities provided after a decision is made.
The majority and dissenting opinions hinged on statutory interpretation. The majority found that Section 666 parallels Section 201(b)—the federal bribery provision—as both focus on an intent to influence, thus leading to the conclusion that Section 666 targets bribery. Conversely, the dissent emphasized the plain meaning of “reward” and other legal provisions using the term in a gratuity context, to argue that Section 666 should cover payments after decisions are made.
Justice Gorsuch, in his concise concurrence, posited that the decision is fundamentally about lenity, underscoring the importance of providing defendants with clear notice of unlawful conduct to avoid unfair prosecutions.
This continues the Supreme Court’s trend of narrowing federal public corruption statutes, as seen in McDonnell v. United States, which raised concerns about the fairness of prosecuting officials for routine interactions.
The Snyder ruling primarily reaffirms the existing legal framework: federal prosecutors can pursue state and local officials for bribery under honest services fraud but not for gratuities. Gratuity-related offenses will thus fall under state and local jurisdiction.
Although the DOJ lost the Snyder case, its commitment to anticorruption prosecutions is likely undeterred. Even as the Supreme Court increases the evidentiary bar for honest services fraud, the federal prosecutors have maintained their pursuit of such cases.
The case is Snyder v. United States, U.S., No. 23-108, decided 6/26/24.
For more context and analysis, the original article can be accessed here.