Today Phil Kushner and I filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court, requesting that it hear Jimmy Dimora’s case and overturn his convictions.

Last August, a federal appeals court unanimously agreed that the jury instructions at his trial violated Supreme Court precedent and enabled the jury to potentially convict him for lawful conduct as a public official. One of the judges on the three-judge panel concluded that all of Dimora’s convictions should be overturned and that he should receive a new trial, while the other two judges concluded that a number of his convictions should nonetheless remain intact.

We seek Supreme Court review on the grounds that Dimora was likely convicted of lawful conduct and that the issues in his case will be implicated in many other cases involving public officials, making the case particularly worthy of a ruling by the Supreme Court.

The Question Presented in the petition is as follows:

Whether a McDonnell error—i.e., defining the element of “official act” overbroadly in bribery counts and thereby enabling a jury to wrongly conclude that a public official’s lawful conduct is unlawful—can invalidate convictions on additional counts that do not have an “official act” element but depend on the jury’s assessment of whether that same conduct is unlawful.

The full petition is available here.