Former Portage Mayor James Snyder, federal attorneys make their case for, against hearing by Supreme Court
Federal attorneys don’t think former Portage Mayor James Snyder deserves to have his conviction on a public corruption charge involving garbage truck contracts reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court but Snyder disagrees.
That’s according to recent filings in Snyder’s bid to have the nation’s highest court go over his case, which has dragged on for several years after two federal trials and two convictions, one on the bribery charge and another on defrauding the IRS involving his personal business. A federal jury found Snyder, 45, a Republican, not guilty on another bribery charge involving a tow truck contract.
Snyder was originally scheduled to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons on Oct. 16 to begin serving a 21-month sentence but U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly agreed to Snyder’s request to postpone surrender to the federal Bureau of Prisons until 60 days after the denial of his pending request to have his case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to an online docket.
On Nov. 16, attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief opposing Snyder’s bid to go before the Supreme Court, noting earlier court rulings in the case that Snyder received a bribe. Snyder, in a Tuesday filing, said the “government barely disputes” that his case warrants review by the Supreme Court, noting disagreement among circuit courts over the difference between bribes and gratuities.
Snyder filed a petition in early August asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider overturning his conviction over taking $13,000 in regards to a contract for garbage trucks.
At the crux of the argument filed by his attorneys is whether that payment, which according to court documents was received after the garbage trucks were purchased in exchange for consulting services reportedly provided by Snyder to Great Lakes Peterbilt, the company that sold the garbage trucks, was a gratuity.
Federal prosecutors have said in court testimony and documents that there was no written agreement between Snyder and the Buha brothers, who owned Great Lakes Peterbilt, to provide consulting services for health care and information technology, nor was there evidence of any work done under the arrangement.
Federal attorneys stuck to their guns in their recent filing.
“As both the court of appeals and district court recognized, the government provided evidence that petitioner received not just a gratuity but a quid pro quo bribe in connection with the City of Portage’s truck purchases,” the filing states.
The filing goes on to note that Snyder and his associate, Randy Reeder, who was the city’s assistant superintendent of streets and sanitation, “took numerous steps to rig the contract-bidding process in favor of the Buha brothers’ company.”
Federal attorneys argued that Snyder’s request for review by the Supreme Court, called a petition for a writ of certiorari, should be denied because it’s “an unsuitable vehicle for further review of the question presented.”
Snyder’s attorneys, in their response, note that “The government’s newfound confidence that it could prove bribery flies in the face of the district court’s observation at sentencing that ‘we really don’t know’ whether the jury would have convicted on bribery alone.”
“The government offered no evidence of any quid pro quo at trial, instead invoking supposed ‘irregularities’ in the bid process,” the filing continues, going on to note that “these procedures were hardly irregular for small-town contracting.”
Snyder was first elected mayor in 2011 and was reelected in 2015. He resigned in February 2019 after he was first convicted on the IRS and garbage truck charges; a jury in a second trial confirmed the guilty verdict in the garbage truck case after he was granted a new trial. Snyder was indicted in November 2016.
