Bryant Found Guilty of Fraud
Another New Jersey politician was found guilty of criminal misconduct this past week. This time, however, the conviction involved the highest ranking political figure in recent times. The former chairmen of the senate budget committee, Senator Wayne Bryant, was found guilty last Tuesday of fraud. The fraud stemmed from a "slow show" job at the University of Medicine & Dentistry. The job was essentially found to be a payoff for funding Bryant procured for the University.
Fraud can be a difficult charge to prove in a Court of law. This may explain why Senator Bryant chose to go to trial in the matter as opposed to accepting a plea bargain for much less time than the 15 years of Federal jail exposure he is now looking at. The assessment of whether to proceed to trial on a fraud charge can be a difficult one and this time it may have backfired. A thorough assessment of the positives and negatives of proceeding to trial is always a must. In the end, however, no one can precisely predict what a jury will do. I am sure Senator Bryant did not anticipate this outcome.
