Wallin Tough on Corruption?

Wallin Tough on Corruption?

Republican Erik Wallin is running as a tough-on-corruption candidate for Attorney General, but a GoLocalProv review of court records shows that he plead out the only public corruption case he tried, giving the defendant one year of home confinement rather than jail time.

Wallin was the chief prosecutor in the case against Robert Boyer, the then-chairman of the West Warwick Economic Development Commission who was charged in 2007 with paying a total of $2,800 in bribes to a local building official, Stephen Murray.

Boyer faced five felony counts of bribery and three counts of violating the state ethics code. But Wallin, who was a prosecutor in the Attorney General’s office, dropped the felony charges, leaving the three ethics violations, which were misdemeanors. Boyer pled no contest to those three charges and was sentenced to one year of home confinement, a $1,000 fine, and one hundred hours of community service, according to court records.

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'Wallin let corruption go unchecked'

Brett Broesder, a spokesman for Democratic candidate Peter Kilmartin, criticized Wallin over the plea deal. “Talk is cheap. Tea Party favorite Erik Wallin says he'll crack down on public corruption, but as a junior prosecutor in the Rhode Island Attorney General's office, Wallin let corruption go unchecked,” Broesder said. “Wallin agreed to a plea deal with a developer indicted on bribery charges. Instead of convicting him of felony bribery, Wallin let him off the hook with no jail time.”

Wallin spokesman Mark Adelman said the deal was not a “one-person decision.” He said the chief of the criminal division, the state police detectives, and Deputy Attorney General also were involved. He noted that Boyer was not the specific target of the investigation—saying Wallin was not at liberty to release more information about the case.

Prosecuted Other Corruption Cases

Asked for other examples of public corruption cases Wallin had prosecuted, Adelman said Wallin led the investigation into Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme, the former DMV employee who was convicted in federal court of producing fraudulent licenses. He said Wallin also handled welfare fraud cases referred by the Department of Labor and Training.

“The welfare fraud cases were recipients of welfare, not government (or) municipal employees or elected officials,” Adelman said. “However, as that was the public's money being defrauded, Erik does consider that a level of corruption.”