Chicago-based federal Judge John Blakey is staring at the two faces of convicted felon Michael Madigan, the former and longtime speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives.
Which one will he find more persuasive? Prosecutors’ portrait of a powerful pol “steeped in corruption”? Or the defense characterization of a kind man whose instincts to help “positively impacted millions of people throughout the State of Illinois”?
Illinoisans will know more about that June 13, when Madigan is scheduled to be sentenced for his multiple convictions on corruption charges.
Prosecutors are asking for a 12.5-year sentence for the 83-year-old Madigan, plus a $1.5 million fine.
Defense lawyers have recommended that Madigan be sentenced to five years probation, a year of home confinement and public service work.
Neither recommendation is realistic.
Nonetheless, both sides have submitted lengthy written statements to the court that explain their recommendations.
Both sides make plausible arguments, but one description of Madigan that was written by his daughter, former attorney general Lisa Madigan, struck home. She characterized him as a rigorously honest “rule follower.”
The “rule follower” characterization cuts both ways.
Madigan was often a rule follower for a very good reason. He wrote the legislative rules that required House Democrats to give him absolute power over the legislative process.
For decades, recently elected and re-elected House members began the new legislature’s session with Madigan’s unanimous election as speaker and approval of the rules that allowed him to run as House as he saw fit.
That’s the version of Madigan prosecutors want Blakey to embrace — the venal, self-interested Madigan who “exploited his immense power for his own personal benefit by trading his public office for private gain” while “carefully and deliberately concealing his conduct from detection.”
Those who followed the years-long corruption investigation and multiple trials of Madigan and his co-defendants are familiar with the bribery conspiracy that brought them all down.
Commonwealth Edison lavished favors, which included generous no-show jobs and highly-compensated legal work, on Madigan’s political associates in exchange for Madigan’s support of company-favored legislation.
Convicted of bribery, conspiracy and fraud, the feds argued that it’s time for Madigan to pay for selling out the public, something he could easily do because “there was no one with more power” than Madigan.
Further, the government argues, Madigan lied when he took the witness stand and has shown no remorse.
Although Madigan very much regrets being convicted, it is accurate that Madigan has expressed no contrition over his purported criminal conduct. That’s because he and his defenders have argued that Madigan engaged in legal political gamesmanship, not criminal behavior.
Indeed, the defense argued the mere accusation of misconduct against Madigan is sufficient punishment all by itself.
They said “no criminal defendant in recent memory has endured the relentless, systematic public demolition that this prosecution unleashed upon Mike Madigan.”
“The media feeding frenzy did not just report the case — it created a cultural narrative where ‘Mike Madigan’ became shorthand for corruption itself,” the defense wrote. “These brutal collateral consequences will define every remaining day of Mike Madigan’s life.”
Is that really the case in Chicago and Illinois? These are locales where citizens long ago came to grips with the continuing reality of relentless public corruption and some slippery pols are not only tolerated, but venerated.
Perusing the names of those who wrote flattering letters on Madigan’s behalf — former Gov. Jim Edgar, the wife of former Gov. Jim Thompson, a who’s who of the city’s business and power elite — indicates that Madigan still is warmly embraced by those who count.
Those who don’t count may not agree, but they don’t count.
