906
Opinion of the Court
cause" for appropriate discovery to prove his judicial-bias claim.
In the District Court, petitioner contended that he was "deprived of his right to a fair trial" because "[t]here is cause to believe that Judge Maloney's discretionary rulings in this case may have been influenced by a desire on his part to allay suspicion of his pattern of corruption and dishonesty." App. 5.6 In support, he submitted a copy of Maloney's 1991 indictment, App. 16-35, and a newspaper article describing testimony from Maloney's trial, in which attorney William Swano described an additional, uncharged incident where he bribed Maloney to fix a murder case. App. 12, n. 1, 36-38. In a supplemental motion for discovery, petitioner's co-defendant Roger Collins alleged that "[a] Government witness in the Maloney case has advised . . . that co-defendant Bracy's trial attorney was a former partner of Thomas Maloney." App. 51. Collins attached to that motion a copy of the United States' proffer of evidence in aggravation in Maloney's case, which describes in considerable detail Maloney's corruption both before and after he became a judge. See App. 54 ("Although [it is] difficult to imagine, Thomas Maloney's life of corruption was considerably more expansive than proved at trial"). The United States' proffer asserts, for example, that Maloney fixed serious felony cases regularly while a practicing criminal defense attorney; 7 that, as a judge, he continued to corrupt justice through the same
6 We express no opinion on the correctness of the various discretionary rulings cited by petitioner as examples of Maloney's bias. See Brief for Petitioner 5-6. We note, however, that many of these rulings have been twice upheld, and that petitioner's convictions and sentence have been twice affirmed, by the Illinois Supreme Court. See n. 1, supra.
7 The Government introduced evidence that Maloney regularly bribed Judge Maurice Pompey and Cook County Deputy Sheriff Lucius Robinson (who would later serve as Maloney's "bag man"); that on numerous occasions, using his organized-crime connections, Maloney fixed cases for his client Michael Bertucci; and that Maloney helped orchestrate the fix in the murder case of underworld hit man Harry Aleman. App. 54-66.
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