Speaker 1: This is Bloombird Law with June Brussel from Bloombird Radio.
Speaker 1: Thirty three parents caught up in the college admissions cheating
Speaker 1: scandal chose to plead guilty. The first two parents who
Speaker 1: chose to have a jury decide their cases were found
Speaker 1: guilty on all counts, guilty of paying hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars in bribes to get their kids into elite
Speaker 1: schools as bogus athletic recruits. Acting you as attorney, Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Mandel said, no one is above the law. They and
Speaker 1: their families enjoy privileges and opportunities that most of us
Speaker 1: can only imagine. Yet they were willing to break the law,
Speaker 1: and the jury has now found that they did break
Speaker 1: the law. The prosecutors had introduced powerful evidence, including secretly
Speaker 1: recorded phone calls between the two men and Rick Singer,
Speaker 1: the ringleader of the scheme. I can send him your
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand that you wired into my account to
Speaker 1: secure the spot for one of your girl joining me,
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtano, who covered the trial.
Speaker 1: So pat, how long was the jury out? Well? The
Speaker 1: jury deliberated just a little over ten hours over two days,
Speaker 1: and it was a categorical win for the government. They
Speaker 1: convicted both of these dads who were accused of paying
Speaker 1: bribes to get their kids into elite schools. Convicted of
Speaker 1: every single count. There was one question from the jury,
Speaker 1: and it was a complicated charge encompassing the concept of
Speaker 1: the parents paid bribe to corrupt people, and by doing
Speaker 1: this bribing, they robbed the colleges of the honest services
Speaker 1: of their employees to do their job properly and not
Speaker 1: give slots to kids whose parents paid bribes. And the
Speaker 1: judge basically gave the jury on the smartest board of
Speaker 1: opportunities to convict them just on that one count alone.
Speaker 1: The jury found guilty on everything. The account I was
Speaker 1: quite stunning. Um. The defense had argued vociferously that they
Speaker 1: had not paid bribe and if they had paid money,
Speaker 1: they understood them to be quote unquote donations to these schools.
Speaker 1: So they said, this corrupt college counselor named William Rick Singer,
Speaker 1: who had played guilty and agreed to cooperate against them,
Speaker 1: he was the con man who had lied to them
Speaker 1: and misled them about what the true function of the
Speaker 1: money was going to be. The prosecutors managed to get
Speaker 1: this verdict even without the testimony of the mastermind. How
Speaker 1: did that go? Well, what they did is they did
Speaker 1: play the wire taps of these parents discussing Lip Singer
Speaker 1: their plan. And John Wilson is the equity executive and
Speaker 1: he was on tape talking to Singer about possibly arranging
Speaker 1: to pay five thousand dollars for each of his two daughters,
Speaker 1: so a million dollars to facilitate his daughter's entrants into
Speaker 1: Stanford and Harvard. And then he asked if he could
Speaker 1: get a two for one deal, so he was haggling
Speaker 1: for a discount, so he didn't want to pay more
Speaker 1: than a million, and the government said that was showing
Speaker 1: his willingness to engage in a dirty deal. And the
Speaker 1: other dad, Gamal abdel Aziz, and he's a former Win
Speaker 1: Resorts executive. He was on tape talking to Singer. Singer
Speaker 1: actually was bragging to him that he wanted to use
Speaker 1: this fake profile that they used to get his daughter
Speaker 1: into USC as they purported basketball star, that he wanted
Speaker 1: to use it for other fake athletes. And Adela Zis
Speaker 1: chuckles and says, I love it. So the government said
Speaker 1: this is the true understanding these two parents had that
Speaker 1: they knowingly understood that Singer was corrupting the process. The
Speaker 1: judge made some evidentially rulings that seemed like points on
Speaker 1: appeal what the government did in this case, and the
Speaker 1: judge allowed it as he allowed the prosecutors to put
Speaker 1: in evidence from other parents, including emails, And then they
Speaker 1: called one of these dads who played guilty. His name
Speaker 1: is Bruce Isaacson. He's a Northern California businessman. He and
Speaker 1: his wife played guilty to pay bribes to Singer to
Speaker 1: get their kids into college. This dad testified about his mindset,
Speaker 1: so the government said, you can infer from the testimony
Speaker 1: of this other dad with these two dads were thinking.
Speaker 1: The defense vociferously argued against this. They said it's unfair.
Speaker 1: Some of the evidence that the defense argued shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been seen by this jury because it had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with these defendants. For example, prosecutors show jurors conversations
Speaker 1: and emails with other parents like Felicity Huffman or Lly
Speaker 1: Laughlin and her husband about their kids that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with these two defendants kids, and all set
Speaker 1: wire taps of other parents talking to Singer which they
Speaker 1: said had nothing to do with their clients, and the
Speaker 1: judge also limited the evidence that the defendants could bring
Speaker 1: in to make their case right. The defender wanted to
Speaker 1: bring in more evidence of what exactly was going on
Speaker 1: at these schools, and they really went after USC, the
Speaker 1: University of Southern California, and they had this v I
Speaker 1: P List which they showed the jury which had all
Speaker 1: these students that were admitted as a similar kind of
Speaker 1: recruited athletes or they're called walk on, So they're not
Speaker 1: the actual star athletes that are you know, national champions,
Speaker 1: but they are students who get in and they get
Speaker 1: to be on the team as like the manager or
Speaker 1: second string for example. And so these two parents would
Speaker 1: argued they should be allowed to show this transactional aspect
Speaker 1: college admissions is about. At USC, they argued that USC
Speaker 1: admitted kids, and they had evidence in this the spreadsheet
Speaker 1: of kids that parents had given donations, including a kid
Speaker 1: whose parents gave USC five million dollars and the kid
Speaker 1: got admitted as a quote unquote walk on tennis recruit.
Speaker 1: But the judge rejected their ability to call USC Athletics
Speaker 1: department officials to really inquire and explore this. You know,
Speaker 1: money talks in the admissions process, and the judge that
Speaker 1: usc was not on trial, so the only thing that
Speaker 1: could really bring out was if you're a recruited athlete,
Speaker 1: you have like anne chance of admission. Some of these
Speaker 1: kids actually get admitted when there's sophomores in high school
Speaker 1: and they get a promise of admissions, of guaranteed admission
Speaker 1: in sophomore year in high school. You did a story
Speaker 1: that there was a debate within the prosecutor's office about
Speaker 1: whether the target singer the mastermind, or use him to
Speaker 1: go after the wealthy parents. And usually prosecutors go up
Speaker 1: the ladder. In this case they went down the ladder.
Speaker 1: Judge Nancy Gertner, who is a retired federal judge in Boston,
Speaker 1: and she's a professor at Harvard Law School, and she
Speaker 1: was saying, that is like using the drug kingpin to
Speaker 1: have them played guilty and testify against his clients, the
Speaker 1: people who buy the drugs rand. This is kind of
Speaker 1: backwards in the philosophy. Now, there was a raging debate.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Andrew Welling, who was the Bostons attorney
Speaker 1: who led the office when they were putting this case together,
Speaker 1: and he said they decided that it would make a
Speaker 1: begger impression against the corrupt parents instead of having a
Speaker 1: learn off case and just going after Singer and have
Speaker 1: him get convicted and then maybe you might be able
Speaker 1: to implicate one or two parents. But they decided to
Speaker 1: go big and make a big, splashy case against all
Speaker 1: these parents because under their philosophy, if this national scandal
Speaker 1: got exposed, it may deter other parents from a perk
Speaker 1: walk or prison jumpsuit. So interesting, thanks, Pat. That's Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado. The two fathers are facing years
Speaker 1: in prison at sentencing, in contrast to the parents who
Speaker 1: pled guilty and served only months in prison. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Law with June Bresso from Bloomberg Radio. This week,
Speaker 1: the Body Administration was at the Supreme Court arguing to
Speaker 1: reinstate the death sentence for Joe hars Or Nayev, the
Speaker 1: man convicted of setting off one of the bombs that
Speaker 1: killed three people at the Boston marathon. That's despite President
Speaker 1: Biden's opposition to the death penalty. The main issue was
Speaker 1: whether the trial judge should have admitted evidence of a
Speaker 1: triple murder allegedly committed by Sarnajev's older brother, Tamerlin, in
Speaker 1: order to show sar Naiev was acting under the influence
Speaker 1: of his brother. The justices were sharply divided down ideological lines.
Speaker 1: Here are Jonas Says, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh. This
Speaker 1: court let in evidence about tamer Lane poking somebody in
Speaker 1: the chest. This court led an evidence about tamer Lane
Speaker 1: shouting at people. This court led an evidence about Tamerlane
Speaker 1: assaulting a former student, a fellow student, all because that
Speaker 1: showed what kind of person Tamerlane was and what kind
Speaker 1: of influence he might have had over his brother. And
Speaker 1: yet this court kept out evidence that tamer Land led
Speaker 1: a crime that that resulted in three murders. And the
Speaker 1: district Court said, we don't know what happened. There's been
Speaker 1: insufficient evidence of who did what, and therefore the theory
Speaker 1: that Tamerlane was the lead player in that is entirely
Speaker 1: unull is unreliable because we don't know when Tadashev had
Speaker 1: all the motive in the world to point the finger
Speaker 1: at the dead guy. There was even a tense exchange
Speaker 1: between the two justices. I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: the premise. I mean the premise was assumed away. The
Speaker 1: premise was assumed away because that's the role of the jury. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to discuss the distrec court's reasoning.
Speaker 1: Joining me to analyze the arguments is John Bloom, a
Speaker 1: professor at Cornell Law School and director of the Corneill
Speaker 1: Death Penalty Project. So, John, why did the Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals throw out Sarnayev's death sentence? The United States Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals for the First Circuit left undisturbed the guilty convictions,
Speaker 1: but reversed the death sentence on two independent bases. The
Speaker 1: first was that the judge and made a legal error
Speaker 1: in refusing to either question or allow the lawyers to
Speaker 1: question the jurors about the content of the pre tropicality
Speaker 1: to which they've been exposed to during the trial. The
Speaker 1: second basis was that the First Circuit determined that the
Speaker 1: trial judge should have allowed evidence that Scenariev's brother previously
Speaker 1: committed to several homicides in Massachusetts, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: admit that evidence of proof that brother had been previously
Speaker 1: radicalized and was acting on his radicalized beliefs, and that
Speaker 1: he's the one who radicalized the scenariev and he was
Speaker 1: the primary planner of the crimes. They wanted to use
Speaker 1: that evocace. It went to basically their theory at the
Speaker 1: case was that Snario was the least culpable the two brothers.
Speaker 1: His brother was planned and included and groomed him to participate. Here,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration is arguing to reinstate the death sentence.
Speaker 1: When Biden ran on ending the federal death penalty and
Speaker 1: in July the Attorney General placed a moratorium on federal executions,
Speaker 1: why do you suppose the Biden administration is taking this position. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, there is some mystery to it. In theory,
Speaker 1: you could draw a distinction between saying we're not going
Speaker 1: to pursue the death only going forward, We're not going
Speaker 1: to allow any executions going forward, but nevertheless, we're not
Speaker 1: going to try and disturb previous convictions and descindances which
Speaker 1: have been imposed. I think some of it is because
Speaker 1: they didn't actually seek surceerarias the Trump administration that asked
Speaker 1: the government to review the decision of the First Circuit.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court had already made that decision when Biden
Speaker 1: became president, and maybe they just didn't want to withdraw
Speaker 1: it at the time, but there definitely is some head
Speaker 1: scratching and long about some of them. There was only
Speaker 1: one Justice Amy Coney Barrett, that raised this issue. Mr Fagan.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what the government's end game is here. So
Speaker 1: the government has declared a moratorium on executions, but you're
Speaker 1: here defending his death sentences and if you win, presumably
Speaker 1: that means that he is relegated to living under the
Speaker 1: threat of a death sentence that the government doesn't plan
Speaker 1: to carry out. Well, let me she's right about that.
Speaker 1: Technically that's not legally relevant to the question for the court.
Speaker 1: But you could ask the same question about well, why
Speaker 1: they take it. This case wouldn't normally meet the rules
Speaker 1: for surerari review. It's not an issue about which the
Speaker 1: lower court in either, one about which there was some
Speaker 1: confusion about. The Court historically has said we don't engage
Speaker 1: in error correction. We don't decide to hear cases just
Speaker 1: because we think the lower court got it wrong. There's
Speaker 1: got to be some so overarching legal rule mistake that
Speaker 1: needs clarification or revision. Less not an issue here either.
Speaker 1: So they clearly granted hurt in this case primarily for
Speaker 1: the purpose, most likely because the majority of them don't
Speaker 1: like the result of air circuit reached. The bulk of
Speaker 1: the argument concerned the judge's failure to admit the evidence
Speaker 1: of the triple murder. What were the justice's main concerns? Well,
Speaker 1: the conservative justice has raised some questions about, well, was
Speaker 1: the evidence reliable? Do we really know what Tamerlin did?
Speaker 1: To come back to that as well, they used the
Speaker 1: same evidence that Scenarios lawyers wanted to present a trial
Speaker 1: as basis to convince a judge there was probable costs
Speaker 1: to conduct a search. So they were saying with the
Speaker 1: government here said it was reliable in one context. But
Speaker 1: yet when scenario and admitted his trial, they said he
Speaker 1: could admit it. Some of the more conservative justice as well,
Speaker 1: you know, this would turn into a mini trial and
Speaker 1: what he did? You know? And who did what? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that concern was overblown, But nevertheless it was
Speaker 1: stated some of the liberal justices, like Justice Elena Kagan,
Speaker 1: we're trying to make a case for having that evidence
Speaker 1: be admitted. Justice Kagan said it was a classic case
Speaker 1: for resolution by a jury. Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: her point there was, Yeah, Okay, So a jury should
Speaker 1: have been permitted to consider this and come to their
Speaker 1: own conclusion about whether the defense theory about who radicalized
Speaker 1: too and who was the primary planner of this was
Speaker 1: right or wrong, and whether it would make a difference
Speaker 1: than whether he should be sentenced to death or not.
Speaker 1: I think the defense point is, well, what to judge
Speaker 1: deprived the jury of the opportunity to decide both what
Speaker 1: the brother did and what was its legal significance in
Speaker 1: terms of determining the defendants moral culpability. Why do you
Speaker 1: think there was so little talk about the second part
Speaker 1: of the First Circuits concerns, which is that the judge
Speaker 1: didn't sufficiently question jurors about their exposure to extensive pre
Speaker 1: trial publicity. Well, I think primarily because that was the
Speaker 1: weaker of the two links in the First Circuits decisions. Generally,
Speaker 1: we give trialject just a lot of discretion on what
Speaker 1: you hear about publicity to sort of manage the trial.
Speaker 1: There's been a number of different high profile trials, you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, and the Supreme Courts repeatedly said, like
Speaker 1: the trial judges kind of their he or sheet is
Speaker 1: in the best place to decide what the move is
Speaker 1: and what the effect of this is. Normally, you know,
Speaker 1: the courts of helic courts are kind of reluctant to
Speaker 1: micro manage that. So I think both sides seem to
Speaker 1: believe that the more difficult question was should be evidence
Speaker 1: a bit admitted of the triple homicide? So does it
Speaker 1: appear as if there are six votes to reverse the
Speaker 1: first circuit and reinstate the death penalty. I mean, if
Speaker 1: all you were doing was listening to the oral argument,
Speaker 1: I think that was the only be consider you would say,
Speaker 1: I think that most likely the Supreme Court is going
Speaker 1: to reverse. But of course, you know the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is most likely to reverse from the fact that they
Speaker 1: grant certain when they grant her ferrari, they grant sir
Speaker 1: to reverse about eighty percent of the time, just the
Speaker 1: pure statistics of it. They see a little where they
Speaker 1: think a lower court got it right, they don't usually
Speaker 1: decide to hear the case, so they can say, okay,
Speaker 1: first Circuit, we just want you to know with the
Speaker 1: you're doing a hell of a job there. So just
Speaker 1: from that you would know that most life that the
Speaker 1: Government's going to prevail if you just listen to the
Speaker 1: oral argument, you would think, Okay, the government's a pretty
Speaker 1: good chance they're going to prevail. But you know, there
Speaker 1: have been a number of cases where they didn't turn
Speaker 1: out exactly like people anticipated in oral argument, and this,
Speaker 1: you know, potentially could be one of them. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to sort of ask questions advantage. It's another to
Speaker 1: sit down and write an opinion in the case that
Speaker 1: makes sense and you can square with prod pressed. So
Speaker 1: let's say sar Nayev wins at the Supreme Court. What
Speaker 1: would happen then? Then I think the government would have
Speaker 1: to decide are they going to retry and or are
Speaker 1: they just going to allow him to service sentence of
Speaker 1: life without parole. I mean, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: bear in mind that his conviction is intact. He's going
Speaker 1: to be in prison for the rest of his life
Speaker 1: no matter what. It's just a question of whether his
Speaker 1: time in prison is going to end from a natural
Speaker 1: death or from a death by execution. If the government wins,
Speaker 1: are there other appeal that Sarnayev could press. Yes, he
Speaker 1: hasn't been through what we normally would call federal post
Speaker 1: conviction review or twifty five proceedings, so they would still
Speaker 1: need to be additional proceedings to look at the quality
Speaker 1: of the representation. Was he denied the rights of the
Speaker 1: effective since the council, Was there any type of prosecutorial
Speaker 1: misconduct we don't know about, and things like that. So
Speaker 1: even if he loses and this appeal, there still will
Speaker 1: be multiple years of litigation before they don't even leave
Speaker 1: a question of whether the destance Gond be carried out.
Speaker 1: When you say multiple years, are are we talking like
Speaker 1: a decade on average? Yeah, I would say we're talking
Speaker 1: to least a decade. Cases normally moved relatively slowly through
Speaker 1: post conviction review. There has to be a new team
Speaker 1: of lawyers is going to have to be appointed. They're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get up to speed in the case.
Speaker 1: They're gonna have to be given the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: an investigation to examine what happened, what trial council didn't
Speaker 1: didn't do, what the prostitution didn't didn't do. So regards
Speaker 1: to what happens here, there will be years of litigation.
Speaker 1: Our death penalty opponents disappointed that Biden so far has
Speaker 1: declined to commute federal death row sentences to life in prison.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't read that much into that either. I mean, normally,
Speaker 1: you know governors or presidents when they commute sentences, they
Speaker 1: sort of do it on the way out of office
Speaker 1: as opposed to on the way in. When you've seen
Speaker 1: that at the state level, when there's been like significant
Speaker 1: numbers of commutations when there was in Illinois, and the
Speaker 1: governors have usually done that near the end of their term.
Speaker 1: So again I wouldn't read too much into that either.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being on the Bloomberg Laws Show.
Speaker 1: That's Professor John bloom director of the Corneilled Death Penalty Project,
Speaker 1: And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show.
Speaker 1: Remember you can always get the latest legal news on
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcasts Slash Law,
Speaker 1: and remember to join us weeknights at ten pm Wall
Speaker 1: Street Time for the Bloomberg Law Show. Oh I'm June Basso,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Bloomberg