In what could be a crushing blow to one of Chicago’s most significant corruption prosecutions in recent memory, a federal appeals court ordered the release from prison Tuesday of former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore and longtime lobbyist Michael McClain while promising to grant a new trial over whether they sought to illegally influence former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
The news came four hours after a three-judge panel with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the case. The ruling put the case back in flux, with a new trial far from a certainty given turnover in the office of U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros. For now, the feds aren’t commenting.
The ruling has no direct impact on Madigan’s separate conviction.
Pramaggiore spokesman Mark Herr and McClain lawyer Joel Bertocchi said they were “pleased” by the news. It followed years of predictions by defense attorneys that a do-over would be necessary, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 limited the reach of a key bribery law used a year earlier to convict Pramaggiore and Madigan ally McClain. Both have been serving two-year prison sentences.
“It has never made sense that Ms. Pramaggiore has served a single day in prison, much less the three months she has served — for ‘crimes’ the Supreme Court said did not exist,” Herr said.
Judges Thomas Kirsch and Joshua Kolar struggled during the argument Tuesday to pin down details of the jury’s decision to convict McClain and Pramaggiore on a conspiracy count, which featured multiple so-called “objects.” The potential objects of the conspiracy included bribery and falsifying records.
Given the feds’ emphasis on bribery during the trial, as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling, the judges wanted assurance that jurors reached a verdict that included false records as an object of the conspiracy, rather than an invalid bribery theory.
“Here’s the problem,” Kirsch told a prosecutor. “When you charge the case and try the case as a bribery case, what’s to say the jury just didn’t consider the illegal bribery object in the conspiracy and stop right there?”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Irene Sullivan assured the panel there was sufficient evidence of false records. But Kolar eventually asked whether it would be appropriate to release Pramaggiore and McClain if a new trial is ordered.
Pramaggiore attorney Paul Clement told the panel, “if you’re convinced that there needs to be a new trial, then you should be convinced that my client should not be in prison right now.”
Clement, a well-known Supreme Court advocate and former U.S. solicitor general, even offered to file a motion for release Tuesday afternoon.
Kirsch told Clement, “I don’t think a new motion is necessary.”
In the order that followed Tuesday afternoon, the court told federal officials to “make arrangements to release Pramaggiore and McClain from federal custody forthwith.” U.S. District Judge Manish Shah, at prosecutors’ request, later ordered the Bureau of Prisons to release the pair “immediately.” Pramaggiore has been serving her time in Florida, and McClain in Kentucky, records show.
Joining Kirsch and Kolar on the panel was Judge David Hamilton, an appointee of President Barack Obama. Kirsch was appointed by President Donald Trump and Kolar by President Joe Biden.
Two of the four prosecutors who tried the case in 2023 have left the U.S. attorney’s office. McClain and Pramaggiore have each served roughly three months behind bars. Sullivan also acknowledged that prosecutors dismissed the bribery charges against the pair at sentencing, so McClain and Pramaggiore wouldn’t face those counts in a new trial. That all raises questions about whether a new trial will proceed, at all.
Tuesday’s arguments before the 7th Circuit came five days after a separate panel heard arguments over Madigan’s conviction. A different jury convicted Madigan for his role in the ComEd conspiracy in February 2025, eight months after the Supreme Court ruling.
The timing of the two trials means that, despite their similarities, the legal arguments are very different.
Pramaggiore and McClain were each convicted on one count of conspiracy, as well as four bribery counts and four counts of falsifying ComEd’s books and records. They were found guilty along with longtime ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and onetime City Club President Jay Doherty, who did not appeal their convictions.
The scheme involved the payment of $1.3 million by ComEd to five Madigan allies over eight years, purportedly to curry favor with the powerful Southwest Side Democrat.
Shortly before the four could be sentenced, the Supreme Court picked up a corruption case from Northwest Indiana that revolved around the same bribery law used to prosecute the ComEd case.
The high court then found, in June 2024, that the law does not criminalize after-the-fact rewards known as “gratuities.” Nine months later, Shah threw out the bribery convictions in the ComEd case but left the remaining convictions intact.
He sentenced Pramaggiore and McClain last summer to two years in prison, ordering McClain to report in December and Pramaggiore to report in January. Pramaggiore asked the 7th Circuit to let her remain free while her appeal played out, but it declined her request last fall.
Still, the appellate court judges seemed to struggle with the case when they heard arguments Tuesday. The judges seemed to take no issue with the strength of the evidence in the case — Kirsch at one point told Bertocchi “there’s a lot of evidence there” — but they asked repeatedly about the conspiracy issue.
They also pointed to the so-called Pinkerton instruction sought by prosecutors during the trial. That jury instruction allowed McClain and Pramaggiore to be held responsible for the reasonably foreseeable actions of their co-conspirators.
“Pinkerton is a dangerous theory to proceed on,” Kirsch told Sullivan, “because it is extraordinarily broad.”
The problem, Clement insisted, is that it’s not known how the jury reached its decision.
He concluded by telling the panel, “I think you have to have a new trial.”