902
Opinion of the Court
paid off judges in criminal cases. App. 54-66; 81 F. 3d 684, 696 (CA7 1996) (Rovner, J., dissenting) ("[B]y the time Maloney ascended to the bench in 1977, he was well groomed in the art of judicial corruption"). Once a judge, Maloney exploited many of the relationships and connections he had developed while bribing judges to solicit bribes for himself. For example, Lucius Robinson, a bailiff through whom Maloney had bribed judges while in practice, and Robert McGee, one of Maloney's former associates, both served as "bag men," or intermediaries, between Maloney and lawyers looking for a fix. Two such lawyers, Robert J. Cooley and William A. Swano, were key witnesses against Maloney at his trial. Maloney, supra, at 650-652.
Maloney was convicted in Federal District Court of conspiracy, racketeering, extortion, and obstructing justice in April 1993. Four months later, petitioner filed this habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, claiming, among other things, that he was denied a fair trial because "in order to cover up the fact that [Maloney] accepted bribes from defendants in some cases, [he] was prosecution oriented in other cases." United States ex rel. Collins v. Welborn, 868 F. Supp. 950, 990 (ND Ill. 1994). Petitioner also sought discovery in support of this claim. Specifically, he requested (1) the sealed transcript of Maloney's trial; (2) reasonable access to the prosecution's materials in Maloney's case; (3) the opportunity to depose persons associated with Maloney; and (4) a chance to search Maloney's rulings for a pattern of pro-prosecution bias.3 The District Court rejected petitioner's fair-trial claim and denied his supplemental motion for discovery, concluding that "[petitioner's] allegations contain insufficient
3 The Government apparently conducted such research in the Maloney case. See Proffer of the Government's Evidence in Aggravation, App. 67 ("[A] review of computer printouts listing all of [one attorney's] felony cases before Judge Maloney reveals that [the attorney] obtained not guilty results in all six of the cases he had before Judge Maloney").
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