U.S. v. Jarigese

In prosecution on wire fraud and bribery counts arising out of defendant's receipt of no-bid contracts from Mayor to build city hall, senior living facility and park district building after defendant had given bribes to Mayor, Dist. Ct. did not err in admitting evidence of Mayor's solicitation of bribes from two other individuals, neither of whom were on trial. While defendant argued that Mayor's scheme to extort money from contractors engaged in business with city was irrelevant to issue of whether defendant had bribed Mayor, said evidence was relevant to proving charged scheme to defraud city of money, property and intangible right to Mayor's honest services. Also, record contained sufficient evidence to support defendant's convictions, where jury was free to accept Mayor's testimony regarding defendant's bribes to him through use of shell business entity, even though Mayor was impeached at trial regarding previous lies that he told under oath. Also, defendant's 41-month sentence was not substantively unreasonable, where: (1) sentence was at bottom of applicable guideline range; and (2) defendant failed to identify any unwarranted disparity between his sentence and sentences that other defendants had received.