A federal judge announced in San Francisco Wednesday that he plans to convene a trial early next year on corruption charges against suspended state Sen. Leland Yee and political consultant Keith Jackson.
Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, and Jackson, a former San Francisco school board president, are accused of conspiring to solicit campaign contributions for Yee in exchange for political favors by the senator.
They are among 28 people charged in a complex 228-count indictment that also accuses Chinatown association leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow and others of conducting an organized-crime enterprise.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the corruption charges against Yee and Jackson would be tried first in a separate trial and the other charges will be tried later.
"In order to get this case moving, I want to set some dates. I'm not going to let it play out in some multi-year decade-long tableau," Breyer told the 28 defendants and their attorneys at a crowded hearing in his Federal Building courtroom.
"It makes some sense to try the campaign contribution case first" because it has fewer defendants and the evidence is less voluminous, the judge said.
Still to be determined is whether the trial will also include counts in which Yee and Jackson are accused of conspiring with the late Daly City dentist Wilson Lim in a never-completed deal to import guns illegally from the Philippines, and in which Jackson, his son Brandon Jackson and sports agent Marlon Sullivan are accused of selling guns to an undercover FBI agent.
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Ralph Frentzen told Breyer he will submit a filing by Nov. 19 outlining which additional charges and defendants, if any, prosecutors want to include in the first trial.
Breyer scheduled a Dec. 18 hearing to consider any objections defense lawyers may pose to the prosecution plan. He did not set a date for the trial.
Yee's attorney, James Lassart, and Jackson's attorney, James Brosnahan, both told the judge they were prepared to go to trial early next year.
Also at today's hearing, Breyer denied motions by various defendants to sever, or divide, the case into two or more cases. He had previously said, however, that he planned to hold two or more trials in the existing case.
Breyer also denied most motions by the defendants for dismissal of various charges, but he ordered prosecutors to file a bill of particulars specifying more detailed charges for the first count in the indictment, an organized-crime racketeering conspiracy charge against Chow, Jackson and 15 other defendants.
The organized-crime activities are alleged to have included drug sales, money laundering, gun sales, schemes to buy stolen property and a murder-for-hire plot that was never carried out.
"The court has some concerns" about whether that count of the indictment gives the defendants adequate notice of what they are accused of, Breyer said.
"As it stands now, it's not enough," he said.
Frentzen told Breyer he will either file a bill of particulars or obtain a revised grand jury indictment within 30 days.
A revised indictment, if issued by a grand jury, would be the third filed in the case. The first two were filed in April and July, following a criminal complaint lodged in March.
Yee, who is free on a $500,000 bond, was suspended from his legislative post by the state Senate after the criminal complaint was announced. He attended today's hearing but declined to comment afterwards.
