CINCINNATI — Former Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld is still waiting, more than eight months after his temporary release from prison, to learn if he ultimately returns to federal custody or if the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturns his public corruption convictions and gives him freedom.
“I would expect something any day. It really could be anytime,” said former federal prosecutor and ex-council member Steve Goodin, who attended Sittenfeld’s 2022 trial and has been following the case.
“It’s not unusual for things to take a long time. The only thing that’s unusual here, and is probably potentially good news for Mr. Sittenfeld, is that the court of appeals did release him pending the ultimate decision on his appeal,” Goodin said. “He arguably can take that as a positive sign that there are at least some members of this panel who are leaning toward potentially either modifying or doing away with the sentence or overturning one of the convictions.”
The panel of three judges released Sittenfeld from prison on May 15 while considering his appeal. He had served roughly 4 1/2 months of his 16-month sentence for bribery and attempted extortion.
The judges noted that Sittenfeld’s appeal, “raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in' reversal or a new trial,” but did not express an opinion on the ultimate outcome, according to the release order.
“The fact that he was released and was not sitting in jail took some pressure off them in terms of the timing,” said Northern Kentucky University law professor Ken Katkin, who attended Sittenfeld’s trial and appeals hearing. “So, it’s likely that this opinion will be longer and more complex than most opinions … it’s even possible that the panel won’t be unanimous and if you get a non-unanimous panel that very much slows down the process.”
Sittenfeld has maintained that he did nothing illegal by accepting $20,000 in campaign donations from undercover FBI agents who were posing as developers and championing their project to redevelop a blighted downtown property into a boutique hotel because he was a pro-development politician.
But prosecutors insist that the jury’s verdict must be respected.
“The jury does not assess any piece of evidence standing alone, the jury assesses all of the evidence in the full context and … the jury found Mr. Sittenfeld’s testimony not credible,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Singer said during oral arguments before the appeals court on May 9.
The jury rejected Sittenfeld’s explanations from the witness stand about his intent behind some very controversial recorded conversations that prosecutors used to convict him in July 2022.
It is extremely rare for an appeals court to overturn a jury’s verdict in a criminal case; it only happens 10% of the time, said Katkin, who gave Sittenfeld a much higher chance of winning on appeal.
“The worst-case scenario for Sittenfeld is that they affirm his conviction,” Katkin said. “If they affirm his conviction, they will rescind the temporary order that let him out of jail, and they’ll actually order him to report back to prison to serve the rest of his sentence.”
The three-judge panel of appointees from President Donald Trump's first term asked repeated questions during the oral argument May 9 hearing that pushed past the normal 30-minute limit by nearly 10 minutes. The judges were John Bush, John Nalbandian and Eric Murphy.
If the appeals court overturns his conviction based on a First Amendment issue, such as an unconstitutional use of the law to convict him, then Katkin said Sittenfeld would be a free man and the felonies would be removed from his record.
Sittenfeld’s attorney, Yaakov Roth, on May 9, warned of the widespread implications on political fundraising if the appeals court let this conviction stand. Roth, a partner at the Washington D.C. law firm of Jones Day, helped to vindicate former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell from corruption charges.
“I do think that the new legal team that Sittenfeld brought in at the end to handle the appeal did an excellent job of laying out the constitutional issues,” Goodin said. “They swung for the fences, and if it comes back on those grounds I wouldn’t be surprised.”
However, if the appeals court throws out his convictions based on a trial mistake or a technical issue, such as bad jury instructions, then prosecutors could retry Sittenfeld at a second jury trial.
“It is possible that a prosecutor wouldn’t retry in a situation like that, but I do think in this situation they would,” Katkin said.
Regardless of what the three-judge panel decides, Katkin said the case is still far from over. He said the losing party could ask for a rehearing en banc before all of the judges of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals or petition the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. He said it’s difficult to predict whether either of those options happen.
“The U.S. Supreme Court only takes about 70 cases a year, they get more than 1,000 petitions a year,” Katkin said. “So, the odds are low … but to m,e they seem to be a little bit higher with the public corruption cases like this one.”
Katkin has followed a series of recent public corruption cases where appeals courts have upheld the convictions of elected officials, only to have them later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Friday morning, City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld announced his support for a stadium deal to build FC Cincinnati's home in the West End.
If Sittenfeld is exonerated, Katkin said it would make it easier for him to get a job, or write a book, or have a political career again.
When Sittenfeld took the witness stand during his 2022 trial, he admitted that he'll "probably never be in politics again."
But Sittenfeld still has more than $928,000 in his federal Progress and Growth PAC, and state campaign account for mayor, Sittenfeld for Cincinnati, according to the most recent filings.
“So, he could come back. Now whether or not he would come back politically, I don’t know,” Goodin said.
“I tend to think he’s not going to try again to run for mayor or anything like that but maybe in the fullness of time he would,” Katkin agreed.
