Appeal denied for ex-Mayor Daley's patronage chief

CHICAGO (AP) — An appeals court in Chicago has refused to overturn the corruption conviction of former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's onetime patronage chief.

The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied Robert Sorich's request to toss his 2006 conviction for helping to rig the city's hiring system to favor the politically well-connected.

Sorich completed his nearly four-year sentence in 2010.

But he still wanted his conviction erased from the books based on a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that curtailed so called "honest-services" laws.

In their 18-page ruling, the three-judge panel agreed some instructions given to jurors at Sorich's trial conflicted with the 2010 high-court ruling.

But the panel deemed the errors harmless and concluded Sorich would have been convicted even if jurors had received the right instructions.