Justices Say Ex-Alderman’s Convictions Need Another Look (1)

The US Supreme Court on Friday vacated a Seventh Circuit decision affirming former Chicago Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson’s convictions for lying to bank regulators.

The law he was convicted under—which prohibits knowingly making “any false statement” to certain financial institutions—doesn’t also criminalize statements that are misleading but not false, the unanimous court said in a decision authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

The statute doesn’t use the word misleading anywhere, and while people may use the words “false” and “misleading” interchangeably in casual conversation, the words mean different things.

“A misleading statement can be true,” Roberts said. False means not true.

The statute’s prohibition on false statements could reach some statements that are misleading or deceitful. But “only because those particular statements are also false,” the chief justice said.

The court remanded the case to the Seventh Circuit, saying that at least some context matters for purposes of determining whether Thompson’s statements were false, and leaving it to the appeals court to decide whether a reasonable jury could so find.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed concurring opinions.

Jackson noted that the pre-verdict instructions provided to the jury didn’t suggest the statute reached anything but false statements. Lower courts may have misunderstood the scope of the statute, but the jury was properly instructed that it could find Thompson guilty only if it found beyond a reasonable doubt that Thompson made the charged “false” statements, she said.

Alito listed what he thought were the “most important” aspects of the decision. Among other things, he emphasized the need for judges and juries to evaluate statements in context.

“In ordinary speech, we do not regard a statement as true or false based solely on the literal or semantic meaning of its words viewed in isolation,” he said.

2022 Conviction

Thompson—the nephew of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley—was convicted in 2022 of five counts of filing false tax returns that claimed mortgage interest deductions he hadn’t paid and two counts of making false statements to the FDIC. He was sentenced to and served four months in prison.

He resigned from his 11th Ward seat following his conviction. He’d served his South Side constituents since 2015.

Thompson’s appeal argued that 18 U.S.C. § 1014—which criminalizes knowingly making “any false statement or report” in order to influence specified agencies and organizations—punishes only false statements, not true-but-misleading ones.

The government argued that a statement is false if it conveys a false message to the listener “in context.”

Here, Thompson told Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. representatives that he “borrowed $110,000" and had a promissory note for that amount after receiving an invoice for $269,000.

That statement can reasonably be deemed “false” under the circumstances, the government said.

Though Thompson’s first loan was for for $110,000, he subsequently took two additional loans. Although the initial loan was the only one for which he had a promissory note, he’d borrowed a total of $219,000.

Thompson argues he never said he only borrowed $110,000.

Thompson is represented by Gair Gallo Eberhard LLP and the UCLA School of Law Supreme Court Clinic.

The case is Thompson v. United States, U.S., No. 23-1095, 3/21/25.