Former Riverdale Mayor Lawrence Jackson was sentenced Thursday to six months behind bars for lying in a civil deposition to hide his financial ties to a clout-heavy landfill owner doing business with the perpetually cash-strapped south suburban village.
In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman noted Jackson had led an otherwise exemplary life, pulling himself “literally up by his bootstraps” to escape Chicago’s housing projects, washing dishes to put himself through college, and eventually entering public service and rising to become mayor under a promise to right Riverdale’s financial ship.
That’s why, Gettleman said, it was all the more difficult and disappointing that Jackson chose to lie under oath, even if telling the truth would have potentially exposed his dealings with businessman James Bracken, who at the time was the target of a federal corruption investigation.
“Public officials are expected to be honest with how they approach the judicial process,” Gettleman said. “(Jackson) was a public official, he was involved with people doing business with the city and he violated the oath that he took … It’s very serious.”
While the six-month sentence was less than what prosecutors requested, Gettleman said he could not square letting Jackson off with probation, saying a message had to be sent to other elected officials that there are consequences for not telling the truth, particularly in their official capacity.
“Obviously in this courthouse we have seen a lot of disappointing results on that,” Gettleman said.
Dressed in a blue shirt and black pants, Jackson, who previously worked as a Cook County corrections officer, showed no outward reaction to the sentence. Before Gettleman announced his decision, he’d declined to say anything on his own behalf, though his attorney read a statement on his behalf saying he “is not able to stand before the court and admit that he violated the law.”
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After the hearing, Jackson huddled on the 17th floor of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with his wife for more than two hours before leaving without comment.
Jackson was convicted by a jury in November of perjury and obstruction of justice, forcing him to resign his position as mayor and forfeit his publicly funded pension. Though he’d also been charged with failing to file federal income tax returns for three years, those counts were severed from the trial and prosecutors dismissed them after Thursday’s sentencing.
The indictment stemmed from Jackson’s 2021 deposition in a civil lawsuit brought by Tri-State Disposal, a waste company that alleged Jackson had stacked the deck in favor of Bracken-owned Riverdale Materials, including firing the chair of the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals and loading it with “persons politically connected to the mayor.”
Prosecutors alleged that to rid himself of a troublesome contractor, Jackson contacted Bracken for help finding a new waste company to replace Tri-State. Bracken eventually introduced him to Flood Brothers, which was hired by the village to conduct a spring cleanup event in May 2018 that Tri-State was already obligated to perform, according to prosecutors.
When asked in the deposition if he had had anything to do with the hiring of Flood Brothers for that event, Jackson said no, and that he had been introduced to the company by the village administrator, Tim Williams. Prosecutors said those both were lies, and that Jackson was introduced to Flood Brothers through Bracken as part of their ongoing relationship.
According to trial testimony, Bracken also played a substantial role in the operations of Centennial Holdings, a trucking business incorporated by Jackson and his wife in 2018 even though the couple knew nothing about how to run it.
Among the evidence shown to the jury were texts and emails showing Bracken ran nearly all aspects of Centennial’s day-to-day operations, including payroll, insurance, timesheets and truck assignments.
The prosecution alleged Jackson lied under oath when asked in the Tri-State lawsuit deposition about Centennial, including when he said his wife kept most of the business’s books and records and that his accountant handled the leasing of Centennial’s trucks.
In fact, Bracken had set up Jackson’s wife with a job at another one of his company’s, Morris Dirt, and was paying the mayor to do virtually nothing, according to prosecutors.
“Defendant’s only role in the company was to pick up a paycheck once a week and pay the truck drivers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirsten Moran wrote in a recent sentencing filing. “Bracken ran defendant’s business—for free—and gave defendant a paycheck for effectively no work.”
The lawsuit ultimately ended in a loss for Tri-State, with Judge Sara Ellis finding there was insufficient evidence the company had been subject to political retribution. Prosecutors argued that the information about the relationship between Jackson and Bracken was materially relevant to that case, and potentially could have affected its outcome.
Jackson’s lawyers argued any inaccuracy in Jackson’s answers was the result of a combination of honest mistakes on his part and poor questioning on the part of Mark La Rose, the attorney deposing him.
“Mistakes happen, and they happen often, because people are human,” defense attorney Gabrielle Sansonetti told the jury in her closing argument. “Mayor Jackson’s answers in that deposition were truthful.”
Jackson’s sentencing comes more than four years after the FBI raided his home as part of an ongoing investigation into Bracken, whose empire includes landfills, waste-hauling firms and BrackenBox, which leases dumpsters.
State campaign records show companies affiliated with James and Kelly Bracken donated more than $30,000 to Jackson’s campaign fund from 2016 to 2021, including an $8,177 in-kind contribution supporting Jackson’s 2019 golf outing at George Dunne National golf club in Oak Forest.
Around the time that Jackson was charged, the Tribune reported federal investigators were interested not only in Bracken’s dealings in Riverdale, but also contracts with asbestos removal companies and in possible fraud in the city of Chicago’s minority-owned business programs.
Bracken has not been charged with wrongdoing.
In court Thursday, Jackson’s attorneys said he had great respect for the criminal justice system and had even helped the FBI with other corruption investigations involving Riverdale. But when the FBI pressed him to say that Bracken had bribed him, he refused to do so because it wasn’t true.
“They tried over and over and over to get him to acknowledge that there was a quid pro quo with Mr. Bracken,” said Nancy DePodesta, who also represents Jackson. “Had there been a corrupt relationship with Mr. Bracken, he would have cooperated. It would have put him in a better position … he did not cooperate because he couldn’t. He wouldn’t succumb.”
The case against Jackson was the latest involving Riverdale, which has a population of about 13,000 and has long been beset by budget woes and allegations of corruption.
In 2014, Chicago real estate developer and ex-government mole John Thomas was sentenced to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing more than $375,000 in taxpayer funds earmarked for a development along the Little Calumet River in Riverdale. He admitted using the cash to pay off personal debts and other expenses.
Jackson, who was elected mayor shortly after Thomas’ fraud came to light, told the Tribune at the time that even though Thomas was ordered to pay back the embezzled money, Riverdale would continue to feel the repercussions of his fraud for years.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but unfortunately the village of Riverdale will never be made whole because of the deceptive, fraudulent practices of Mr. Thomas,” Jackson said then.
In his last bid for reelection before being charged, Jackson told the Daily Southtown
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he had a record of cost savings, improved efficiency and greater accountability.“When I came into office in 2013, this village was saddled in lawsuits and investigations,” Jackson said. “We couldn’t pay our bills. I’ve been able to stabilize government. We renegotiated contracts, restructured debt and got Riverdale on a path to solvency.”
More than 13 years later, the village’s woes continue. In its most recent report in April, the global credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings downgraded Riverdale’s financial picture to a CCC, citing “a severely weakened financial profile, including a negative balance of available general fund reserves, and very limited liquidity.”