Court rebuffs ex-Daley aides

Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief and two other former city officials lost their bid Tuesday for an unusual hearing by all of Chicago's actively sitting federal appeals judges.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a majority of the judges voting on whether to hold a so-called en banc hearing had been against the idea. It would have involved all the court's judges except those on senior status.

Robert Sorich, 43, once known as the mayor's patronage chief, was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted in July 2006 of using fraud to cover up the role of political patronage in city hiring.

Three other former city aides were convicted along with him.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court denied their request for a new trial on April 15, saying they had been "key players in a corrupt and far reaching scheme - that doled out thousands of city civil service jobs based on political patronage and nepotism."

The patronage system has been entrenched in Chicago for decades, reserving jobs on the city payroll for the precinct captains who get out the vote for the mayor and the candidates he supports on Election Day.

Hearings by all of the court's actively sitting judges are unusual but far from unheard of. The court held such a hearing for former Gov. George Ryan after a three-judge panel upheld his racketeering conviction.

The appeals court did not give a reason for turning down the en banc hearing. It merely said the majority didn't want one.

Two appeals judges, Michael S. Kanne and Richard A. Posner, dissented.

In his five-page dissent, Kanne said the appeals court needed to explore further its decision that Sorich had deprived the city of his "honest services" and thus was guilty of fraud. The question of what constitutes honest services fraud has been a hot issue in recent years.

Kanne also said it was unclear that violating a series of 30-year-old court decrees banning patronage could serve as the basis for a crime.