Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Sheldon Silver Found Guilty Again

Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was found guilty of corruption charges on Friday by a jury in Manhattan federal court after an appeals court threw out an earlier conviction.

Silver, 74, was charged with directing state money to a prominent cancer researcher and supporting a real estate developer’s interests on rent legislation in exchange for about $4 million in bribes and kickbacks.

Silver was found guilty of all seven counts against him, including honest services fraud and extortion. The jury handed down its verdict at the end of its first full day of deliberations.

Silver was convicted for the first time in November 2015. In May 2016, Caproni sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

Last July, however, a New York federal appeals court threw out the conviction. The court ruled that the jury had received improper instructions in light of the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision overturning the corruption conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.