William Boyland Jr.’s jury got the same kind of “overbroad” instructions as the one that found Sheldon Silver guilty — but the corrupt Brooklyn assemblyman’s lawyers failed to object, according to the ruling that reversed Silver’s conviction Thursday.
In a footnote to its decision, the federal appeals panel noted that in denying Boyland’s appeal Monday, “we affirmed [the] conviction despite finding that the jury instructions were erroneous.”
“We note, however, that . . . Boyland did not apply a harmless error standard of review because the defendant in that case did not object to the jury instructions,” Judge Jose Cabranes wrote.
Boyland, a Democrat whose father and uncle both held his Assembly seat before him, is serving 14 years behind bars for scams that included shaking down $7,000 from federal agents who posed as crooked businessmen and collecting more than $70,000 in bogus taxpayer-funded expenses.
The defense lawyers who represented him during his 2014 trial didn’t return calls for comment.
Lawyer Michael Bachrach, who represented Boyland during an earlier trial at which he was acquitted of unrelated corruption charges, said he had no idea why Peter Quijano and Nancy Ennis didn’t raise an objection.
“I certainly would have, however they might have had a reason for not doing so,” he said.
Lawyers in the pending case against two high-ranking ex-NYPD cops, James Grant and Michael Harrington, plan to challenge bribery charges based on the US Supreme Court decision Silver used to have his conviction tossed.