Openings to begin in ex-Assembly speaker's corruption trial
NEW YORK (AP) — New York's former assembly speaker returns to federal court Monday to listen as prosecutors accuse him for a second time of collecting $4 million in illegal kickbacks from a cancer researcher and real estate developers.
This will be the second criminal trial for Sheldon Silver, 74, a Democrat who was once among the most politically powerful people in the state.
His first, in 2015, ended with a guilty verdict and 12-year prison sentence. That conviction, however, was reversed last July, giving Silver a second chance to avoid possibly spending the rest of his life in prison.
The trial is likely to largely be a repeat of the last, tailored slightly to conform to a June 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the definition of a corrupt act.
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