ALBANY — Federal prosecutors, citing a recent US Supreme Court decision, have conceded for the first time that last year’s conviction of former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on two felony counts must be dismissed, The Post has learned.
The concession came in a letter from Northern District US Attorney Richard Hartunian to Bruno lawyer William Dreyer late last month in response to Dreyer’s inquiry about the impact of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in June throwing out the complicated “honest services” statute under which Bruno was convicted.
Hartunian, after reviewing details of the decision and noting that the judge’s instructions to the jury were based on the now-nullified statute, told Dreyer, “We will concede that reversal is appropriate as a result of the instructional error.”
The letter asks that Bruno’s lawyer agree that new charges under a different section of law could be brought against the 82-year-old Rensselaer County Republican in exchange for the dismissal of the charges.
“There’s not a chance that any defense attorney in the world would ever agree to such a stupid request,” said prominent Albany trial lawyer Stephen Coffey, a Bruno friend and legal adviser who is familiar with the letter.
“I think the federal prosecutors are making fools of themselves with this,” Coffey continued.
Bruno, it was learned, plans instead to file an appeal of his conviction with the federal Circuit Court of Appeals next month, citing the Supreme Court decision and, possibly, Hartunian’s letter and its concession that the conviction should be reversed.
A spokesman for Hartunian could not be reached for comment.
Bruno was convicted on two of eight charges after a lengthy trial in which he was accused of concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from a businessman who had sought help from the Legislature.
He was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay $280,000 in restitution, but the penalty was stayed pending a much-anticipated US Supreme Court decision involving the “honest services” section of the federal mail-fraud law under which he was tried.