Former top Mike Madigan aide sentenced to 2 1/2 years

CHICAGO (CN) — A federal judge on Monday sentenced Tim Mapes, once a key player in ex-Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s political apparatus, to 2 1/2 years in prison.

Jurors convicted Mapes, who served as Madigan’s chief of staff for over 25 years and once also acted as the executive director of the Illinois Democratic Party and clerk of the Illinois House of Representatives, on perjury and obstruction charges last August. Federal prosecutors indicted Mapes in May 2021, claiming he lied in seven of his responses to a grand jury that March in order to shield Madigan and former Democratic Illinois state rep. Michael McClain from a federal investigation into their own alleged corruption.

The two charges on which jurors convicted Mapes carry a combined maximum sentence of 25 years — five years for perjury and an additional 20 years for obstruction.

U.S. District Judge John Kness sided more with prosecutors than with Mapes’s defense team in his sentencing decision. He highlighted the importance of Mapes’ sentence, in part because of the public nature of the case.

“People of the state of Illinois cry out for accountability,” he said.

Both sets of attorneys filed sentencing memorandums in January, with prosecutors urging the court to sentence Mapes to about five years behind bars. His own attorneys sought to keep him out of jail altogether, asking the court to consider a sentence of time served with supervised release and a “substantial amount” of community service.

Prosecutors based their sentencing calculations on a number of factors. They considered that Mapes sought to protect an elected official, Madigan, from bribery allegations, that he had no prior criminal history and a low risk of recidivism, and that they wished to “promote respect for the law” in response to Mapes’ supposed undermining of the grand jury process.

“When a long-time public servant makes the calculated and deliberate decision to lie in the grand jury, the criminal justice system, and our entire democracy, is threatened,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Julia Schwartz wrote in the government’s sentencing memorandum.

She told the courtroom Monday that Mapes’ actions show a lack of respect for the rule of law and that his sentence should reflect such.

“Mapes’ lies were designed to make it harder to prosecute a crime,” Schwartz said.

The strategy of Mapes’ defense attorney Andrew Porter, by contrast, was to present the court with a rosy biography of the former Madigan insider; painting him as a dedicated public servant and law-abiding innocent man who respected the jury’s verdict despite disagreeing with it.

Porter highlighted Mapes’ family life and years in public service, and included testimonials from his friends and former colleagues in Springfield.

“I hope when my judgment day comes, I have half as many stories as he does,” Porter said in court Monday.

Porter said Mapes was “crushed” by his forced resignation in 2018 — on the heels of allegations he sexually harassed an employee of the speaker’s office — and claimed the five years since then “have constituted a half decade of misery for Tim and his family.”

“Accordingly, a term of imprisonment is unnecessary to craft a fair and just sentence in this case,” Porter wrote.

Porter also argued Mapes was not properly prepared for his grand jury testimony. He said his client only answered “I do not recall” for certain questions because he did not remember what happened.

Kness rejected Porter’s argument before he delivered Mapes’ sentence. He said if the jury believed that he didn’t remember what happened, they would’ve acquitted him. But instead, Mapes lied out of misguided loyalty.

“This was a serious offense,” Kness said to Mapes. “There’s no way around the fact, Mr. Mapes, that you lied to the grand jury.”

Kness said he considered the factors the prosecutors laid out for Mapes’ sentence, but found their recommended sentence of five years to be too much. By the same token, he said Porter’s recommended sentence of probation and community service didn’t go far enough.

Ahead of delivering Mapes’ 2 1/2-year sentence, Kness said he opted for the shorter sentence in part because Mapes is 69 years old and has a low risk of recidivism.

For his part, Mapes told the court that he was humbled and remorseful, but he did not take full responsibility for his role in Madigan’s bribery scheme.

“I am so sorry for the toll this has taken on my family,” Mapes said.

Before the attorneys filed their opposing sentencing memos, Mapes also tried to halt proceedings in his case pending a decision in the Supreme Court case James Snyder v. U.S. An appeal of former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder’s bribery conviction in March 2021, the case could potentially lead to a re-interpretation of the federal bribery statue central to the government’s claims against Madigan, McClain and the “ComEd Four.”

Jurors convicted the Four — including McClain — this past May on bribery and fraud charges for facilitating energy company Commonwealth Edison’s admitted yearslong bribery scheme in the Illinois statehouse. Madigan lay at the center of that scheme, with prosecutors saying he helped ensure laws beneficial to the company’s bottom line passed through the state Legislature.

Snyder questions whether the bribery statute under which Madigan and the Four were charged criminalizes gratuities — that is, payments the official may have taken in recognition of their past actions or actions they have committed to take — absent any direct quid pro quo exchange. As prosecutors accuse Madigan not of accepting direct bribes but of having the Four arrange jobs and favors for his political allies, the Supreme Court altering its interpretation of that statute could have a profound effect on his case.

Madigan won a six-month reprieve to the start of his trial while the Supreme Court debates the question, and the Four also had their sentencing dates postponed. Mapes, who also claimed Snyder should have some bearing on his own case, was not so lucky.

“Defendant was not convicted of bribery; he was instead found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice, two crimes that involve statutes entirely different from the statute at issue in Snyder and in the case against Mr. Madigan,” U.S. District Judge John Kness wrote in his order denying Mapes’ stay motion.

Follow @djbyrnes1