A federal appeals panel on Tuesday overturned the 2015 corruption convictions of Dean G. Skelos, once the powerful majority leader of the New York State Senate, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, citing a decision last year of the United States Supreme Court that narrowed the legal definition of corruption.
The ruling comes roughly two and a half months after another appellate panel cited the same Supreme Court decision to vacate the convictionof Sheldon Silver, the former longtime Democratic speaker of the State Assembly. Mr. Skelos and Mr. Silver both forfeited their seats upon their convictions.
The rulings in the two former lawmakers’ cases, which focused on errors in jury instructions, show how broad the impact of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision has been in New York alone, undoing the two most prominent public corruption cases brought by Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.
But the ruling on Tuesday made it clear that the government’s evidence against the Skeloses was sufficient to allow a properly instructed jury to convict the two men, finding that there was enough evidence to establish that there had been a quid pro quo arrangement.
Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, and his son were convicted in December 2015 of bribery, extortion and conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that the men abused the father’s office to pressure a Manhattan developer, a medical malpractice insurer and an environmental technology company to provide the son with hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting work, a no-show job and a direct payment of $20,000.
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But, as in the Silver case, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the judge’s instructions to the jury in the Skeloses’ trial were in error in light of the Supreme Court decision, which involved Bob McDonnell, the former Republican governor of Virginia, and was issued about six months after the Skeloses were convicted.
The panel found that the judge’s explanation to the jury of an official action was too broad, and that the jury may have convicted the Skeloses for conduct that was not unlawful under the McDonnell ruling.
“Because we cannot conclude that the instructional error as to ‘official acts’ was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” the panel said, “we are obliged to vacate defendants’ convictions in their entirety and to remand the case for a new trial.”
Joon H. Kim, the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said he was disappointed in the ruling and noted that it found that the evidence was “more than sufficient” to convict the two men.
“We look forward to a prompt retrial where we will have another opportunity to present the overwhelming evidence of Dean Skelos and Adam Skelos’s guilt, and again give the public the justice it deserves,” Mr. Kim said.
Mr. Bharara said on Twitter on Tuesday that the ruling was not unexpected but was still disappointing. The Supreme Court “made it harder to punish corruption, but justice should prevail here,” tweeted Mr. Bharara, who was fired by the Trump administration in March.
Alexandra A. E. Shapiro, Mr. Skelos’s lawyer, said her client was grateful for the ruling and looked forward to the next steps in the case.
“We believe that as events unfold, it is going to become clear that this is a case that never should have been brought,” she said.
Adam Skelos’s lawyer, Robert A. Culp, said that he and his client were “very gratified” by the ruling.
The trial judge, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had allowed the Skeloses to remain free on bail pending their appeals. Judge Wood had sentenced Dean Skelos to five years in prison and given Adam six and a half years.
The appeals panel that issued the order included Judges Ralph K. Winter, Reena Raggi and Alvin K. Hellerstein.
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