Susan Shelley: Don’t be surprised if Mark Ridley-Thomas’ conviction is overturned

Former L.A. County Supervisor and suspended L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas was convicted on federal charges of corruption last week, found guilty of bribery, conspiracy, honest services mail fraud and multiple counts of honest services wire fraud, a total of seven of the 19 felonies prosecutors had charged.

In a post-trial press conference, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Martin Estrada, told reporters that his office had brought to justice “an individual who abused his position of power.” Estrada said “the critical counts in this case, which were conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery itself, were found and convicted in this case.”

But there was something weird about the case, including the testimony from a former chair of the California Fair Political Practices Commission that a $100,000 payment was legal.

As we all have seen many times, pay-for-play corruption is often legal in California, as long as the FPPC reports are filled out correctly and filed on time. However, these were federal charges involving “honest services,” a term that so puzzled the jury in Los Angeles that they sent a question to the judge asking for a definition. Maybe the convictions will hold up on appeal. Then again, maybe they won’t.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the bribery conviction of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. In that case, McDonnell and his wife had received lavish gifts including a Rolex watch, $15,000 for wedding expenses and $20,000 in designer clothes, from a nutritional supplement marketer named Jonnie Williams. McDonnell helped to arrange meetings for Williams with state health officials, talked up the product with advisers at a meeting to discuss the state’s health plan, and hosted a luncheon event at which the company was featured.

But in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court said none of this rose to the level of official government action in violation of the federal anti-corruption law. The justices defined the “honest services” statute narrowly, writing, “conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time.” To prove a crime, the court said, prosecutors would need evidence that a “specific and focused” official action was targeted by the bribe, an action that could be brought before the public official, involving a “formal exercise of government power.”

In the case involving then-supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (MRT), prosecutors presented evidence that at the time his son, then-Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (SRT), was facing allegations of sexual harassment, MRT communicated with the dean of USC’s School of Social Work, Marilyn Flynn, who was seeking county contracts to help fund her department. SRT was set up with a scholarship to USC and a position as a professor. And the county Board of Supervisors did approve contracts with the USC School of Social Work.

Jury foreperson Kirsi Kilpelainen told the Los Angeles Times that constructing the timeline of events was an ongoing project throughout the panel’s 4 1/2 days of deliberations. Ultimately, the jury did not convict MRT on the charges related to SRT’s USC scholarship or position as a professor.

“We just decided that USC had some kind of VIP program, and how were we to know that Sebastian wasn’t a part of that,” Kilpelainen explained.

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MRT was convicted on seven felony counts connected to a $100,000 payment from his campaign account through USC to United Way, which was intended to provide funding for an initiative that SRT had established.

Kilpelainen said the jurors consulted their timeline and concluded that the funneling of the money through USC, instead of directly to United Way, combined with an email urging the USC dean to “act with dispatch” to move the money, established an “understanding” between MRT and the dean sufficient to convict MRT of bribery, conspiracy and “honest services” fraud.

Mark Ridley-Thomas has been a fixture in Los Angeles politics since he first served on the City Council starting in 1991. He was elected to the Assembly, then the state Senate, then the County Board of Supervisors, then the City Council again.

He has vowed to appeal the conviction and says he did not violate the law. Don’t be surprised if it turns out that way.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley