Sheldon Silver Conviction Overturned By Appeals Court

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver's conviction for extortion and money laundering has been overturned, a federal appeals court decided on Thursday.

Silver was longtime fixture of New York politics, and served as the speaker in the state assembly for 20 years until he was convicted in 2015. During his trial, prosecutors said Silver took $4 million in payments in exchange for political actions.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said prosecutors would retry Silver shortly after his conviction was overturned.

Joon Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that the evidence presented at Silver's first trial "was sufficient to prove all the crimes charged against Silver."

"While we are disappointed by the Second Circuit’s decision, we respect it, and look forward to retrying the case," Kim said in a statement. "Although this decision puts on hold the justice that New Yorkers got upon Silver’s conviction, we look forward to presenting to another jury the evidence of decades-long corruption by one of the most powerful politicians in New York State history."

Silver's conviction was overturned thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling that changed the definition of when a public official may be tried for public corruption. The appeals court ruled on Thursday that in the wake of this decision, which stemmed from a case involving the former governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell, the jury that convicted Silver had not received proper jury instructions. Silver has been free since his conviction while his appeals process proceeded.

In 2015, prosecutors said that Silver accepted millions of dollars in payments in exchange for official actions. Authorities presented evidence that Silver ensured that state grants totaling $500,000 were awarded to a cancer researcher at Columbia, Dr. Robert Taub. In a complicated exchange of favors, Taub then referred his patients with legal claims to a law firm that gave Silver a cut of those patients' legal fees, prosecutors said in 2014.

Silver, of the Lower East Side, was elected as speaker in 1994 and served until his conviction in 2015.

Watch: Sheldon Silver Corruption Conviction Overturned

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Lead image credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Stringer / Getty Images News.