7th Circuit denies Madigan’s bid to stay out of prison while he appeals
corruption conviction
[October 04, 2025]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — With 10 days until former Illinois House Speaker Michael
Madigan is scheduled to report to federal prison, the 7th Circuit Court
of Appeals on Friday denied the longtime Democratic power broker’s bid
to remain free while he challenges his corruption conviction.
Without extraordinary intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court,
Madigan’s hopes for staying out of prison are slim as he prepares to
surrender on Oct. 13.
The former speaker was convicted in February on 10 federal corruption
charges — including bribery — after a lengthy trial in which he was
accused of trading legislative action for jobs and contracts for his
allies along with introductions to potential clients for his property
tax appeal law firm.
The Chicago-based appellate judges did not sign their order or explain
their ruling Friday, but it affirms the decision from Madigan’s trial
judge in August, who wrote that the ex-speaker’s “entire motion rides on
routine, and meritless” objections and had “not come close” to meeting
the “high burden” he’d need to argue to stay out of prison.
“As such, he clings to false hope,” U.S. District Judge John Blakey
wrote.
Blakey sentenced Madigan to 7 ½ years in a June hearing during which the
judge ruled the former speaker had committed perjury when he made the
risky decision to testify in his own defense as the trial drew to a
close.
“The defendant’s testimony was littered with obstruction of justice and
it was hard to watch,” Blakey said at Madigan’s June 13 sentencing. “To
put it bluntly, it was a nauseating display. … You lied, sir. You lied.
You did not have to.”
After Blakey’s ruling denying bond in August, Madigan’s new appellate
attorneys argued to the 7th Circuit that the judge’s ruling set an
unreasonably high standard under which almost “no defendant could obtain
release pending appeal.”
“In complex fraud and corruption cases like this one, courts routinely
grant release,” the lawyers wrote in a brief last month.
The 83-year-old former speaker will be pushing 90 by the time his
sentence is through, unless he wins on appeal.
Madigan spent handsomely on defense attorneys dating back to before he
was even charged, including an expensive trial team that won him
acquittals on seven of his 23 corruption charges, while the jury
deadlocked on another six counts. But the former speaker, whose $40
million net worth was revealed in legal back-and-forth prior to
sentencing, is not done shelling out for court battles.
This summer, Madigan hired a high-profile team of lawyers to handle his
appeal, including Lisa Blatt, who holds the record for the woman with
the most cases argued — more than 50 — in front of the U.S. Supreme
Court. Blatt’s win rate is equally remarkable, including successfully
arguing for a Northwest Indiana mayor whose corruption case spurred the
high court’s conservative majority to narrow the federal bribery statute
in a 2024 decision.
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Flanked by his two daughters, former Democratic House Speaker
Michael Madigan, the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S.
history, departs the Dirksen Federal Courthouse after receiving a 7
½-year prison sentence on corruption charges. He was also fined $2.5
million. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Lawyers for Madigan and those separately convicted of bribing him have
leaned heavily on that ruling, which stipulates an after-the-fact
“gratuity” is not the same as a bribe agreed on before an elected
politician performs an “official act.” And earlier this year, a federal
judge threw out the majority of bribery convictions for the so-called
ComEd Four, a group of ex-lobbyists and executives for electric utility
Commonwealth Edison who were found guilty after their own
Madigan-related trial in 2023.
The judge ruled that while there was evidence of bribery between the
ComEd defendants and Madigan, there was enough reasonable doubt to grant
a new trial because it wasn’t clear that the jury would have reached the
same verdict if given instructions more in line with the Supreme Court’s
decision last year.
But there will be no retrial; the ComEd Four were finally sentenced this
summer on their remaining conspiracy and wire fraud convictions, and the
bribery counts were dismissed.
Blatt and her colleagues have another month to file arguments in
Madigan’s larger appeal, but they’ve already previewed their fight
against prosecutors’ use of a “stream-of-benefits” theory of bribery
where they were not required to prove a smoking-gun handshake moment,
but rather tried to convince the jury of a pattern of benefits over
eight years.
And they’ll also try to push for the U.S. Supreme Court to define the
meaning of “corruptly,” which was discussed during Blatt’s 2024 oral
arguments but not conclusively addressed in the court’s decision. Even
so, Madigan’s attorneys tried to plant doubt about the prosecutors’ use
of the word — and their clients’ intent — during closing arguments in
January.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has not yet assigned the former speaker to
a correctional facility, but his attorneys requested he serve out his
sentence at a prison camp in Terre Haute, Indiana.
If that ask is granted, Madigan will join former ComEd lobbyist Jay
Doherty, who reported to the Terre Haute Federal Corrections Institution
earlier this week. Doherty was sentenced to a year in prison for his
role funneling money to Madigan allies through his longtime ComEd
contract.
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