With little more than a week to go before the start of her public-corruption trial, former state Treasurer Martha Shoffner asked a judge Friday to dismiss the charges, saying she wasn’t properly charged.
The motion to dismiss for lack of federal jurisdiction and failure to bring a charge that can be prosecuted in federal court was filed late in the afternoon on Shoffner’s behalf by attorney Grant Ballard of the Banks Law Firm in Little Rock.
Ballard said the extortion charges were filed under the federal Hobbs Act, which can be used to prosecute only crimes involving commercial assets or the assets of a business involved in interstate commerce. He noted the indictment accuses Shoffner of taking $36,000 in cash from a bond broker in return for steering valuable state bond business toward him, but it doesn’t claim the money constituted commercial assets or the assets of a business involved in interstate commerce.
“This is a case where the defendant obtained money from a private individual and, regardless of the propriety of that interaction, federal jurisdiction is absent and the indictment itself is deficient in that it does not state a violation of the Federal Hobbs Act,” the motion states.
Shoffner faces a 14-count indictment - six counts of extortion, one count of attempted extortion and seven counts of accepting a bribe as an agent of state government.
“The issue presented in this case,” he said, “is whether the Hobbs Act extends to situations where a defendant is alleged to have improperly obtained the personal assets of an individual.”
He said the indictment “seeks to camouflage its clear deficiency regarding the lack of a recognized affect on interstate commerce by stating the defendant’s actions and influence benefited ‘the broker’s business.’” But the broker, he argued, didn’t own the business that was trading with the state.
As for the bribery charges, Ballard argued that the statute under which prosecutors charged Shoffner refers to acceptance of a bribe concerning a federal program, but the indictment “fails to name the federal program which allegedly brings the conduct of the defendant within the scope of the statute.”
“As a result,” he argued, “the indictment is deficient and would appear to be a violation of due process because a defendant should be entitled to know exactly which federal program” was involved.
Ballard said that in addressing whether the government must prove a bribe influenced or affected federal funds, the U.S. Supreme Court has said applying the statute in some cases “could extend federal power beyond its proper bounds.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/22/2014