United States v. Frega

Over a 12-year period, attorney Patrick Frega (defendant) and car-dealership owner Jim Williams gave over $100,000 worth of payments and benefits to three former judges of the California Superior Court in San Diego, Dennis Adams (defendant), James Malkus (defendant), and Michael Greer, and the judges’ family members. In 1996, Greer cooperated with the prosecution (plaintiff) to give grand-jury testimony that resulted in a 21-count indictment against Frega, Malkus, and Adams. During a month-long jury trial, Malkus testified that he was unaware of Frega’s payments to Malkus and Malkus’s family, Adams’s counsel acknowledged that Adams received benefits from Frega but disavowed Adams’s corrupt intent, and Frega claimed that he merely gave gifts to the judges out of friendship and generosity. Frega, Malkus, and Adams were all convicted of conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and multiple counts of mail fraud. The jury also convicted Frega of a substantive RICO offense. The RICO charges were premised on Frega’s guilt of bribery under California state law. Frega, Malkus, and Adams appealed. In addition to several allegations of errors brought by the three judges, Frega attacked the evidence that he had committed the underlying bribery offense by alleging that (1) the indictment was facially invalid because it did not identify specific decisions or acts that Frega allegedly intended to influence; (2) insufficient evidence supported Frega’s bribery conviction; and (3) the court erred by refusing to read Frega’s proposed jury instructions.