USA v MRT: Snyder, the Distinction Between Bribes and Gratuities, and the Fatal Flaws (PART 2)

Before federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and appellate lawyers for Dr. Mark Ridley-Thomas completed the exchange of written briefs in MRT’s appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) handed down a potentially game-changing decision on a case that may have a significant impact on the Ninth Circuit’s USA v MRT deliberations. In June, the SCOTUS Snyder decision clarified the meaning of the main federal bribery statute government prosecutors used to convict MRT. 

SCOTUS ruled that there is a distinction between a bribe and a gratuity. Bribes, Snyder explained, require a quid pro quo agreement to exchange enrichment for official action. Gratuities, by comparison, are “reward[s] given after the act with no agreement beforehand ….”

Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted, “Federal and state law distinguish between two kinds of payments to public officials—bribes and gratuities.”

The Court found that “bribes are payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act. American law generally treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful.” 

However, according to Kavanaugh, the treatment of gratuities by the law is more nuanced. “Gratuities,” he explains, “are typically payments made to an official after an official act as a token of appreciation.“

“Some gratuities,” he observed, “can be problematic.”  

“Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” he continued. “A family gives a holiday tip to the mail carrier. Parents send an end-of-year gift basket to their child’s public school teacher. A college dean gives a college sweatshirt to a city council member who comes to speak at an event….”  

Kavanaugh drew a distinction between the two. “[G]ratuities after the official act are not the same as bribes before the official act. After all, unlike gratuities, bribes can corrupt the official act—meaning that the official takes the act for private gain, not for the public good [emphasis added]. That said, gratuities can sometimes also raise ethical and appearance concerns. For that reason, Congress, States, and local governments have long regulated gratuities to public officials.”

The government, Kavanaugh concluded, was asking SCOTUS to adopt “an interpretation of [Section] §666 that would radically upend gratuities’  rules and turn §666 into a vague and unfair trap for 19 million state and local officials. We decline to do so.”

MRT’s appeal has seized on both the distinction between bribes and gratuities as well as the Court’s conclusion. Supplemental briefs from appellate counsel touched on many of the issues that are at the crux of MRT’s appeal. “Snyder held that [Section] § 666 prohibits only bribery—that is, ‘payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act’…” 

The appeal uses the Snyder decision to reinforce the central thrusts of its argument. The prosecution’s case is fatally flawed. They improperly interpreted the key federal bribery and fraud statutes MRT was charged with violating. 

By the standard set in Snyder, prosecutors failed to prove MRT entered into a quid pro quo agreement before any official action involving USC that resulted in his personal enrichment or financial benefit to him or anyone else. Prosecutors advanced an invalid legal theory of “monetization” for actions for which there was no evidence of a quid pro quo agreement. The characterization of “reputational harm” and “nepotistic optics” as “things of value” that were allegedly exchanged for official acts underscored the invalidity of that theory. Trial court errors failed to instruct the jury properly on that distinction between bribes and gratuities, causing prejudicial harm to MRT. 

After reviewing the facts and law in this case, a member of the MRT appellate team, Retired Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Paul Watford said, “Dr. Mark Ridley-Thomas is not guilty of either federal-programs bribery or honest services fraud. The government’s prosecution of Dr. Ridley-Thomas involved none of the hallmarks of traditional bribery: no private enrichment, no intent to be influenced, and no deception material to the would-be victims. His convictions cannot stand.”