A federal judge Wednesday threw out the criminal case against five former members of the San Diego city pension board who were charged with conspiring to boost their own pensions with a risky financial plan.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez noted that the law governing pension boards at the time exempted public employees serving on such boards from conflict-of-interest allegations. The federal indictment said the five violated a federal statute meant to ensure that public employees provide "honest services."<\/p>\n
Benitez said the indictment, which had been sought by the U.S. attorney, stretched the law — now being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in other cases — to the breaking point.<\/p>\n
"Fortunately, due process forbids turning citizens into criminals through the application of novel, untested applications of a criminal statute," he wrote.<\/p>\n
The ruling marked the second time that a criminal case stemming from the city’s pension deficit controversy had been tossed out.<\/p>\n
In January, the state Supreme Court dismissed similar charges filed by the district attorney against six people who were on the board when it boosted pensions and allowed the City Council to decrease its payments into the pension fund.<\/p>\n
— Tony Perry in San Diego\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge Wednesday threw out the criminal case against five former members of the San Diego city pension board who were charged with conspiring to boost their own pensions with a risky financial plan. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez noted that the law governing pension boards at the time exempted public employees serving on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4422,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}