Weyhrauch v. U.S.

Weyhrauch v. United States

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal by former Alaska Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch that prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to say he cheated Alaska's citizens when he secretly sought work from the oil-field service company Veco during the 2006 legislative session.

In 2006, the FBI searched Weyhrauch and several other legislators' offices. Weyhrauch's indictment accused him of offering to sell his influence in the Legislature to VECO Corp.'s Bill Allen during oil tax and natural gas pipeline negotiations in 2006.

The specific charge the Supreme Court will hear alleges Weyhrauch violated mail fraud statutes by failing to disclose that he was seeking a job from Allen while considering the oil tax legislation. The mail fraud aspect stems from a resume Weyhrauch mailed to Allen in seeking the job.

The question that the justices will decide is whether "the government must prove that the defendant violated a disclosure duty imposed by state law," the court said Monday in its brief announcement.

While the trial court in Anchorage agreed with Weyhrauch, prosecutors appealed just before the start of his trial. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with prosecutors, saying legislators had a duty to disclose such conflicts. The court reasoned that even if a state had weak ethics laws, that was no reason for its citizens to be deprived of the honest services of their public officials.

Weyhrauch acknowledged that two other circuit courts had made similar rulings, but said that another two had a different standard: They required a state law violation before the mail fraud statute could be used in a criminal case.

Weyhrauch asked the Supreme Court to clear up the "confusion" between the different circuits and to adopt the more limited standard.

Question presented: Whether, to convict a state official for depriving the public of its right to the defendant’s honest services through the non-disclosure of material information, in violation of the mail-fraud statute (18 U.S.C. Sec. 1341 and 1346), the government must prove that the defendant violated a disclosure duty imposed by state law.