Four people pleaded not guilty Wednesday during an arraignment on bribery charges in connection with the ComEd scandal.
This summer, federal prosecutors and Exelon subsidiary ComEd entered a deferred prosecution agreement. In the agreement, the utility admitted it paid $1.3 million in jobs and contracts to associates of House Speaker Michael Madigan over the span of nine years.
Madigan has not been charged with a crime. He has denied wrongdoing.
Another former ComEd official, Fidel Marquez, pleaded guilty to bribery in September.
Last month, two other former ComEd officials were charged, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and lobbyist John Hooker. Two known Madigan associates, Michael McClain and Jay Doherty, were also charged in the case.
The Chicago Tribune reported the four appeared by video on Wednesday in federal court all pleaded not guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges.
“There’ll probably be continued discovery, continued investigation, it’s a waiting game at this point,” said Saint Xavier University professor David Parker. “A game of chicken, who’s going to blink first.”
Parker is the director of the school’s Center for the Study of Fraud and Corruption.
“The closer it’s going get to trial, more people are gonna start kinda sweating it out and say ‘okay, what can I plead out, what’s the lowest sentence I could get, or what the best deal I can get as a defendant,” Parker said. “As a prosecutor, your thinking is ‘do I really want to go to trial or do I want to assure victory out of this.’”
Parker said sometimes it’s about how prosecutors can get to someone “higher up.”
“They’re going to be willing to work out some deals if somebody is going to be willing to provide information that they really, really want, testimony, etcetera,” Parker said.
The most serious charges against the four could come with a 20-year prison sentence. A status hearing is set for Feb. 16. All four defendants are free pending trial.
