United States v. Arroyo, No. 22-2008 (7th Cir. 2023)
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Arroyo served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 2006-2019, while also managing a lobbying firm. In 2018-2019, Arroyo’s firm received $32,500 in checks from Weiss’s sweepstakes-gaming company in exchange for his official support for the sweepstakes industry in the General Assembly. Despite never previously expressing a view on sweepstakes gaming, Arroyo began pushing for sweepstakes-friendly legislation and encouraging other legislators and executive-branch officials to support the same. Arroyo concealed his financial arrangement with Weiss.
When the government uncovered the bribery scheme, Arroyo pleaded guilty to wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. 666(a)(2). The court sentenced him to 57 months’ imprisonment and ordered that he forfeit $32,500 in bribe money. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting Arroyo’s contention that the judge erred by finding his 57-month sentence necessary to deter public corruption. District judges need not marshal empirical data on deterrent effects before considering whether a sentence adequately deters criminal conduct. The judge presumed that public officials are rational actors who pay attention when one of their own is sentenced. That presumption that sentences influence behavior at the margins was reasonable. The court also rejected arguments that the judge erred by deeming several of his allocution statements aggravating and ordering him to forfeit too much money.
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