Mass. Atty Gets 2 Years For 'Corruptly' Pushing Pot Bribe Plot - Mr. Mark Smith, LL.M., CLDP

A former Massachusetts attorney "violated his oath corruptly" by bribing a police chief with payments to his brother to win a local marijuana license for a client, a federal judge said Wednesday as he handed down a two-year prison term. During a hearing in Boston, U.S. District Judge William G. Young also ordered Sean O'Donovan to pay a $150,000 fine and serve three years of supervised release, during which time he is barred from attempting to regain his ability to practice law. A jury convicted O'Donovan in October of a fraud and bribery scheme designed to secure one of three retail marijuana licenses awarded by the City of Medford, a suburb of Boston.   The jury was shown multiple secretly recorded videos of O'Donovan meeting with the brother of the Medford police chief. The lawyer's initial request to have the chief simply read the license application submitted by his client, cannabis retailer Theory Wellness, morphed into an agreement that the chief would alter his ranking because O'Donovan promised to pay the brother $25,000, the videos showed. "It is terribly offensive and demeaning conduct in the operation of our government," Judge Young told O'Donovan on Wednesday. "The government must be free from that corruption." O'Donovan's role as an attorney weighed heavily on Judge Young's review of the government's request for 41 months in prison and O'Donovan's proposal for no more than a year and a day behind bars. "This is an attorney," the judge told O'Donovan's counsel, Martin G. Weinberg of Martin G. Weinberg PC. "You've got to deal with that. This is an attorney who has violated his oath, corruptly. I'm deeply troubled by that, not just the public corruption, the fact that this is an attorney." Prosecutors called the scheme "a simple case of old school, old-fashioned, smoky backroom bribery," arguing O'Donovan abused his attorney-client relationship with Theory Wellness to advance the purported bribe. He created a facade to try to convince the chief's brother that Theory Wellness's chief executive was "pulling the strings," all the while keeping the client in the dark about how he was advancing their interests before the licensing body, prosecutors said.  Weinberg told the court that O'Donovan had forfeited his right to practice law, a privilege he may never regain. The defense lawyer added that aspects of the case, including the government's alleged concoction of the bribery offense, counsel against a high sentence. O'Donovan, Weinberg argued, never paid a cent to Medford Police Chief Jack Buckley. While that may not make the ploy legal, it is very different from the "heartland" of political corruption and bribery cases, Weinberg said.  Weinberg added that the government must have been insecure about the case it was building in September 2022 because it had the chief's brother, Michael Buckley, "put to O'Donovan a hardener" — a fictional statement to draw a stark line between his request of having the chief read the application and a quid pro quo that they could build a case on. On that day, Michael Buckley told O'Donovan that Jack Buckley had reviewed the application and had ranked Theory Wellness low on the list of firms vying for the limited slots. But, the brother continued, the chief said he'd change his ranking because of the payment. "He said 'great' instead of the only answer which would have fit the law," Weinberg said, which is to rank the company as he saw fit. Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy said in a statement Wednesday that O'Donovan was "driven by greed," and the scheme was undone when the police chief learned of the attorney's overture to his brother and told federal authorities. "Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks they can corrupt government officials for personal gain: your conduct will be uncovered, and will land you in federal prison — regardless of who you are," Levy said. In the lead-up to sentencing, O'Donovan's legal team had argued the conduct amounted to legally protected lobbying, despite how unsavory the arrangement seemed. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Jacobson said Wednesday the scheme was about O'Donovan lining his own pockets and crossing a bright line to serve his self-interest, namely a generous success fee that Theory Wellness offered if it won the license. Judge Young waved off the lobbying defense earlier in the case and reiterated his view of the alleged conduct. "It's a bribery case in this court's mind," the judge said. "It's not a lobbying case." In the moments before sentencing, O'Donovan stood to address the court. He decried the "terrible decision" he made, adding he has "no one to blame but myself." With the judge's permission, he turned to the courtroom gallery packed with his family and friends, apologizing to them and to his elderly mother for letting them down. "That was one of the most effective allocutions I've heard, and I believed it," Judge Young responded, adding that without it, he would have faced a far heavier sentence.  O'Donovan's attorney declined to comment on the sentence when approached outside the courtroom.  O'Donovan is represented by Martin G. Weinberg of Martin G. Weinberg PC, by Michael Pabian of Michael Pabian Law Office LLP, and by Timothy R. Flaherty. The government is represented by Kristina Barclay of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts and Jonathan E. Jacobson of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division. The case is U.S. v. O'Donovan, case number 1:22-cr-10141, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.