Judges uphold bribery sentence of Arkansas businessman

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the 2016 bribery and wire-fraud convictions, and the correlating seven-year prison sentence, of businessman Ted Suhl of Warm Springs in northeast Arkansas.

Jurors found that Suhl, 52, paid Steven Jones, then the deputy director of the state Department of Human Services, $10,000 to $20,000 in cash bribes over four years in hopes of receiving inside information that could benefit Suhl's businesses.

Among the businesses Suhl owned were Maxus Inc. and Trinity Behavioral Health, formerly known as The Lord's Ranch. Both for-profit companies provided behavioral health care to juveniles, and together received $125 million in state Medicaid funds during that same period, from April 2007 to September 2011. The department administers the Medicaid program and regulates juvenile mental health care providers.

Jones pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe and was sentenced to 2½ years in federal prison, agreeing that he took cash disguised as donations to a West Memphis church to make Suhl believe that he was more or less "on retainer" to Suhl. Jones, who is also a former state legislator, testified that he didn't perform any "official acts" at Suhl's request, but by accepting the cash through a middleman, led Suhl to believe he would share helpful inside information.

Suhl argued that U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson improperly defined the crime of bribery in analyzing the indictment and instructing jurors; committed evidentiary errors; and unreasonably calculated the amount of loss related to the crime, subjecting Suhl to longer penalty ranges.

But the panel disagreed.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Kelly of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who authored the 16-page opinion, cited Suhl's effort to increase his companies' Medicaid reimbursement rates by asking Jones to "see if he can get the Medicaid portion [of the department] up under his jurisdiction," and asking Jones to increase the geographical radius from which one of his companies could receive referrals. Suhl also asked Jones to persuade the governor to reappoint him to a state board that licenses and inspects juvenile residential treatment facilities, Kelly noted.

While Jones never specifically agreed to do any of the things Suhl requested, he told the wealthy businessman that he would "look into" the requests, and sometimes said he had participated in a meeting so he could gain more information for Suhl, the opinion noted.

Phillip Carter, a Crittenden County probation officer, testified that he served as the "middleman" for Suhl because he had frequently referred youths to Suhl's companies for treatment and lived near Jones' hometown of Marion. Carter also pleaded guilty before Suhl's trial and had his original two-year sentence cut in half in exchange for his testimony.

The panel cited the last of several meetings between Suhl and Jones, and the fact that it was "comprehensively documented by the FBI," whose video surveillance showed Suhl passing Carter a check intended for Jones. FBI agents confronted Carter after the meeting and he agreed to cooperate, allowing agents to watch him hand the check to Jones. Jones then agreed to cooperate as well.

Suhl was convicted on four of six charges: two counts of honest-services wire fraud and two counts of bribery, each filed under a different federal statute. He was acquitted of conspiracy and another honest-services wire fraud charge.

In his appeal, Suhl contended that a U.S. Supreme Court case handed down after he was indicted but before he was tried prevented him from being convicted of bribery because it specified that a briber had to intend to influence someone in return for an official act, which it defined as "a formal exercise of government power." But the panel said "we are unconvinced that [the ruling, McDonnell v. United States] requires the sort of agreement that Suhl describes."

Neither McDonnell nor the two statutes under which Suhl was charged impose "a universal requirement that bribe payors and payees have a meeting of the minds about an official act," the panel said. It noted that someone who pays a bribe "completes the crimes of honest-services and federal-funds bribery as soon as he gives or offers payment in exchange for an official act, even if the payee does nothing or immediately turns him in to law enforcement."

Suhl, who told probation officers that his net worth was more than $5 million, also complained that the judge wouldn't let him present evidence of his and his family's history of donating to Christian causes. But the panel said Suhl was able to introduce evidence of his regular contributions to Carter's church before the crimes were committed, and his mother was allowed to testify that the questioned payments were part of the family's "long-running benevolence."

The panel said Wilson reasonably calculated the amount of loss to be $176,820 -- the amount that Suhl's company would have benefited if Jones had acted on Suhl's request to widen the radius of his company's referrals.

The other judges on the panel were Steven Colloton of Des Moines, Iowa, and Duane Benton of Kansas City, Mo.

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Metro on 03/23/2018

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