## Facts

- Percy Z. Giles was a longtime Chicago alderman for the 37th Ward.
- A company (the Niagra Group) used a 15-acre industrial site in Giles’s ward as an illegal construction-debris dump.
- Giles received more than $81,000 from Niagra while using his official influence to impede or derail municipal efforts to shut down or remediate the dump.
- Giles also accepted $10,000 in cash bribes from a government informant.
- Giles failed to report illicit payments as income on federal tax returns.
- A jury in the Northern District of Illinois convicted Giles on 13 counts, including RICO, mail fraud, Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, and filing false tax returns; he received a 39-month sentence.

## Issues

1. In a Hobbs Act prosecution for extortion under color of official right, must the government prove a specific, explicit quid pro quo agreement, and were the jury instructions deficient for not requiring it?
2. Was the evidence sufficient to show the payments were obtained under color of official right rather than lawful political contributions or unrelated gifts?
3. Did alleged evidentiary rulings and instructional errors warrant reversal or a new trial?

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentence.
- The court held the government was not required to prove a rigid, explicit, contract-like quid pro quo for Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right.
- The evidence permitted a rational jury to find that Giles received payments in return for using his official position to benefit the payers.
- The jury instructions, viewed as a whole, adequately stated the governing law, and asserted trial errors did not warrant reversal.

## Legal Principles

- Hobbs Act extortion “under color of official right” is established when a public official obtains payments he is not entitled to receive, induced by the power of public office and understood as exchanged for official influence or action.
- The government need not prove a formalized or explicitly articulated quid pro quo; it is sufficient that both sides understood the payments were made in return for the exercise of official power.
- Lawful political contributions become criminal when conditioned on official action or when an official makes performance of official duties contingent on personal payments.
- On sufficiency review, the verdict stands if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, a rational jury could find each element proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Jury instructions are reviewed in their entirety; minor imperfections do not require reversal absent a misleading statement of law or prejudicial error.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Giles’s public-corruption and tax convictions, ruling that Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right does not require proof of an explicit quid pro quo so long as the evidence supports that payments were made and accepted in return for the use of official power, and finding the evidence and instructions sufficient to sustain the verdict.


United States v. Giles, 246 F.3d 966 (7th Cir. 2001)