Former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan took the long-awaited step Wednesday of asking the nation’s highest court to hear an appeal of the historic corruption conviction that could keep him behind bars until he is nearly 90 years old.
The move comes three months after the federal appeals court in Chicago upheld Madigan’s February 2025 conviction, finding that trial evidence “exposed a sustained and concealed arrangement to exchange enormous political influence within the Illinois General Assembly for over $3 million of benefit for political allies.”
Madigan’s lawyers want the U.S. Supreme Court to grapple with key legal questions from his case, including when a public official acts “corruptly” and whether an alleged promise to make a job recommendation qualifies as an “official act.”
“The novel bribery theories the government zealously pursued against Speaker Madigan stretch federal bribery law in ways that threaten to criminalize and chill lawful interactions between state and local officials and their constituents,” Madigan’s lawyers told the justices in their petition.
Madigan’s legal team includes Lisa Blatt, a well-known high court litigator who claims an 82% win rate before the Supreme Court. She attended arguments in Madigan’s case before the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April.
The Supreme Court only takes a fraction of the cases presented to it, making Madigan’s petition a long shot. But the high court has already upended Madigan’s case once. In June 2024, it used a separate case to limit the feds’ use of a bribery law at the center of Madigan’s prosecution. The justices also debated the meaning of the word “corruptly” during arguments but never defined it.
A federal jury in February 2025 convicted Madigan, now 84, of a bribery conspiracy, wire fraud and other crimes. U.S. District Judge John Blakey handed Madigan a 7½-year prison sentence four months later, finding that Madigan lied to the jury when he testified in his own defense.
Madigan then surrendered to a minimum-security prison camp in West Virginia last October.
The former speaker’s conviction centered on two schemes. In one, ComEd paid five Madigan allies $1.3 million over eight years so Madigan would look more favorably at the utility’s legislation. The money was funneled through third-party firms, and the recipients did hardly any work for ComEd.
The utility also paid $1.8 million to the Reyes Kurson law firm as part of the conspiracy.
The other scheme involved a deal to have then-Chicago Ald. Danny Solis installed on a state board in exchange for Solis’ help landing private business for Madigan’s tax appeal law firm. Solis had been working undercover for the FBI at the time, in a bid to avoid prison for his own alleged wrongdoing.
