Former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore walks to U.S. Dirksen Courthouse for her sentencing on July 21, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
A 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals order to release former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore and longtime Springfield lobbyist Michael McClain from prison came as a surprise to many. We too were taken aback, we confess, at the speed at which the three-judge panel moved.
Just hours after the conclusion of their Tuesday hearing on Pramaggiore and McClain’s appeals, they sprung the two from the federal prisons that had held them for more than three months. Both were serving two-year prison sentences.
But we were far less surprised that the appellate judges ordered new trials for these two of the so-called ComEd Four defendants found guilty in 2023 of conspiring to bribe then-House Speaker Michael Madigan in order to win highly lucrative state legislation for ComEd and its corporate parent Exelon. The other two defendants, former ComEd lobbyists John Hooker and Jay Doherty, didn’t appeal and now are serving the remainder of their time in halfway houses.
In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court upended prosecutors’ interpretation of federal law used to convict the ComEd Four. The high court’s ruling in a separate case involving former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder effectively required an explicit quid-pro-quo arrangement to find an officeholder guilty of bribery, as the ComEd Four were.
Also separately found guilty of bribery, by the way, was Madigan himself, who’s serving a 7.5-year sentence in federal prison and has appealed his 2025 conviction. This ruling may well portend a new trial for Madigan as well.
Which in part is why Andrew Boutros, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, quickly ought to green-light a retrial of Pramaggiore and McClain.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, April 3, 2026. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
For better or for worse, the Supreme Court has clarified how — and how not — to prosecute public officials caught corruptly conspiring with favor-granting and clout-heavy players, as ComEd was during that era. Best to test out now what sort of evidence and trial approach will be convincing to a jury faced with complex public-corruption charges in this new legal landscape.
Editorial continues here.