Opinion: 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.
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. 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.
In the case involving then-supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas , prosecutors presented evidence that at the time his son, then-Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas , 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.
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