Detroit –Last July, not long after Monica Conyers pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges, her attorney said he hoped to keep her out of prison.
She’ll find out if he can at 2 p.m. today, when she’s sentenced for the five-year felony. And few observers like Conyers’ chances of staying free.
Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, the sentencing judge, heard seven days of testimony in the case of U.S. v. Riddle. It easily could have been mistaken for U.S. v. Conyers.
Her former chief of staff, Sam Riddle, was on trial. But much of the evidence and nearly all headlines related to the conduct of Conyers. Prosecutors presented secretly recorded phone conversations and other evidence to support their case that Riddle and Conyers teamed up as “political pirates” to plunder business people with matters pending before the City Council or the General Retirement System.
Riddle’s trial, which ended in a hung jury and is set for a redo in July, heard evidence that Conyers would regularly eat at Mosaic in Greektown and refuse to pay her bill, frequently hit up a city developer for cash for shopping trips and her child’s tuition, and on one occasion shocked Melvin Washington of the Phoenix Group by reaching into his pocket in public and grabbing a wad of cash.
“It would not surprise me if Mrs. Conyers gets the five years, unless she has recognized the wisdom of doing something to balance what is otherwise a fairly distasteful set of facts,” said Margaret Raben, president of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan.
Conyers’ attorney, Steve Fishman, said it’s up to Cohn what sentence Conyers receives, but “I don’t believe that anything that came out in the Sam Riddle trial will have any effect whatsoever on Monica Conyers’ sentencing.” He would not elaborate.
On June 26, Conyers pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy, admitting she met a courier sent by Detroit businessman Rayford W. Jackson to take at least $6,000 in cash bribes in connection with her deciding vote on the $1.2 billion sewage sludge contract the City Council awarded to Synagro Technologies Inc. of Texas in 2007.
Bribery conspiracy is a five-year felony, so five years in prison is the maximum Conyers could get. In passing sentence, federal judges are assisted by, but are not bound by, federal sentencing guidelines that are calculated based on factors such as the prior criminal record of the defendant, how much monetary loss was involved in the crime, and whether the defendant has accepted responsibility.
Prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum this week asking for a “substantial” prison sentence and said Conyers’ sentencing guidelines would be 46 to 57 months if Cohn counts not just the Synagro bribes, but tens of thousands she and Riddle are accused of extorting from Detroit-area businesses.
Depending on the number that’s used for the monetary loss in the Synagro case, Conyers’ sentencing guidelines could be as low as 2.5 years or exceed the five-year cap, according to people familiar with the case.
Cohn has already sentenced two defendants in the Synagro case who pleaded guilty to exactly the same charge.
Jackson, the Detroit businessman who was Synagro’s local partner and who publicly proclaimed his refusal to cooperate with the FBI, received the maximum sentence of five years.
James R. Rosendall Jr., the former Synagro vice president who provided what prosecutors described as “extraordinary” help by secretly making audio and video recordings of others involved in the City Hall corruption scandal, got 11 months.
Unlike Jackson, Conyers and her attorney have been silent on the issue of cooperation. Most defendants who cooperate, such as Rosendall and former City Hall aides Kandia and DeDan Milton, have clauses in their plea agreements in which they promise to help prosecutors. Conyers’ plea deal says no such thing and the government did not call her as a witness in the recent Riddle trial.
By hurling an insult at a City Council meeting in 2008, the volatile Conyers likely assured that Detroit City Councilman Kenneth Cockrel Jr. always will be associated with the animated film character Shrek. But thanks to wiretaps played at the Riddle trial, Conyers herself will never escape this quote: “You better get my loot, that’s all I know.”
Riddle’s trial swayed public opinion further against Conyers, a one-term councilwoman who already was notorious for run-ins with colleagues.
“She needs all of her time and some more (because) of all the swindling and the stuff she did,” said Marjorie Henry, 64, who lives on the city’s northeast side. “I didn’t have any trust in her from the very beginning. I just think she needs more than five years. She’s just a poor person to have represented our city in any method.”
But Conyers has at least a couple of characteristics in her favor. She has no prior criminal record and has two sons, one who is still in school and another in college.
That’s why Mike Fisher, a longtime community activist on Detroit’s east side, said Conyers shouldn’t get the full five years.
“I don’t think she should get the maximum,” Fisher said. “But at least 18 months to two years to send a message that this won’t be tolerated. She was an elected official and she violated a deep trust. The community felt they couldn’t trust her and it made it hard to work with her.”
But one major factor sets Conyers apart from Jackson and Rosendall, legal experts say. They’re businessmen; she was an elected official.
“I would expect that the sentence for the elected official who solicited the bribe and the business person who paid the bribe, I would not expect those to be the same,” said Margaret Raben, president of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan.
“There’s such a violation of public trust,” and the allegations against Conyers are “really ugly,” Raben said.
“It would not surprise me if Mrs. Conyers gets the five years, unless she has recognized the wisdom of doing something to balance what is otherwise a fairly distasteful set of facts,” she said.
Larry Dubin, a professor at the University of Detroit Mercy law school, said it’s the position of trust that Conyers held that is most likely to influence Cohn, not any personal distaste or public outrage over the revelations from the Riddle trial.
“As the public official, it seems to me the judge will hold her to a higher standard than he would an average citizen.” Dubin said. However, “I don’t think Judge Cohn will be swayed by any possible public sentiment to give her the maximum sentence.”
From The Detroit News:
