A Second Circuit panel grilled attorneys for the federal government and former New York Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno on Friday about whether the lawmaker, who was convicted in 2009 of depriving taxpayers of his honest services, should be tried again after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling invalidated his conviction.
Northern District Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Coombe asked a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to remand the two counts, as well as a third count that resulted in a hung jury, to the Northern District for a new trial because Skilling v. United States, 130 S. Ct. 2896, had rendered the instructions to the jury in Mr. Bruno’s original trial erroneous.
