ICYMI: Sheldon Silver Will Likely Be Re-Tried In April

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Former state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver will likely be re-tried in April, a federal judge said on Tuesday.

Silver, the powerful New York politician from the Lower East Side, was convicted of extortion and money laundering in 2015 before a federal appeals court overturned that conviction last month.

Prosecutors have promised to re-try Silver, and a judge said set April 16 as a likely start date for the retrial, according to the Albany Times Union. Silver is appealing his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Should the highest court in the land decide not to weigh in on Silver's case, the re-trial will begin in April(For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Joon Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in July 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 last month 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.

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