* Steve Daniels on the legal arguments over jury instructions for the ComEd defendants…

“The instructions should state, as defendants have argued, that a violation . . . requires a quid pro quo,” according to the [defense] filing. “In other words, a person acts corruptly in violation of (the law) when he or she exchanges a thing of value for an official act. The Supreme Court has held that ‘for bribery there must be a quid pro quo—a specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.’ ”

So, in the instructions they propose Leinenweber give, [defendants] suggest he make clear, “It is not a crime to give something to a public official to build a reservoir of goodwill that might ultimately affect one or more of a multitude of unspecified acts, now and in the future.”

The proposed jury instructions from U.S. Attorney John Lausch, also filed May 16, suggest instead this construct: “A person acts corruptly when that person acts with the intent that something of value is given or offered to reward or influence an agent of state government in connection with the agent’s official duties.”

Defense attorneys want more specificity than that.

So, if a legislator wins a “Best Friend of the Widget Industry” award every year and receives regular campaign contributions from the widget group and its members and then sponsors a new widget industry bill, are the industry lobbyists and the legislator who happens to represent lots of widget workers acting corruptly or is the legislator merely a beneficiary of goodwill and attempting to do something perceived by the legislator and the industry as a positive for the state?

And, yes, I get that ComEd went way beyond the above hypothetical, but the debate the defense wants to have is whether what they did was just an extreme, far more organized and hugely effective extension of the smaller-scale things that happen every day in the political world. Ultimately (after a retrial), Rod Blagojevich’s argument that the feds were criminalizing politics did not work. These defendants, however, appear to have better lawyers and will likely be far more well-behaved than Rod was.