It was a novel approach for a political bribery case.
Prosecutors told jurors that one of the benefits a developer gave a former Richardson mayor in exchange for votes was sex.
Jurors agreed with the government and convicted the ex-mayor, Laura Jordan, and her lover-turned-husband, Mark Jordan, on nearly all counts after just a day and a half of deliberation. Nevertheless, the salacious details of their illicit romance and alleged corrupt plotting will once again be chronicled inside a Sherman courtroom.
That’s because of a court security officer’s careless remark to a distraught and undecided juror hours before the verdict. It resulted in the judge throwing out the 2019 conviction and ordering a new trial. The juror had been a holdout, and the defense argued she was improperly swayed by the officer.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant agreed and granted the defense motion for a new trial, a decision later upheld by the Fifth Circuit following an appeal by the government. Opening statements in the retrial of the Jordans, who married during the controversy, are scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Based on recent court filings, the government does not appear to be changing its core strategy that resulted in success on the first go-around. Except for the addition of four tax counts, the evidence and testimony is expected to be similar if not identical to the previous trial that lasted more than three weeks.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment, and defense attorneys in the case could not be reached.
Dan Guthrie, a former federal and state prosecutor who is now in private practice in Dallas, said a retrial gives the defense an advantage.
“They have already seen everything the government is going to use against them,” he said. “The second time around, there shouldn’t be any surprises. The defense also has all of the testimony from the first trial. If a government witness changes their story, the defense can impeach the witness with what they said before.”
Developer Mark Jordan, 54, is accused of romancing then-Mayor Laura Jordan, 56, and showering her with money, lavish vacation trips, sex and other gifts. In exchange, she voted for a controversial zoning change that added more than 1,000 apartments to his mixed-use development despite intense opposition from neighbors, prosecutors say.
Her position on the new apartments near Richardson neighborhoods was that the city didn’t need them, “period.” But after meeting the handsome, rich developer, she had a sudden change of mind, prosecutors said.
Laura Jordan, then Laura Maczka, voted several times on matters concerning his Palisades project during her single two-year term as mayor despite her own promises to oppose such development and opposition from hundreds of residents, authorities said. She also voted for a $47 million incentive deal for Jordan and his business partners, court records say.
She served as Richardson’s mayor from May 2013 through April 2015 before stepping down after winning a second term. She and Mark Jordan were each found guilty in 2019 of four counts: conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery. Laura Jordan was acquitted on one of the counts against her related to wire fraud.
Love on trial?
Defense lawyers argued that Mark Jordan was just helping out a friend with medical bills and other expenses, then fell in love with her. They tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mazzant to keep out details of the Plano couple’s adulterous affair — both were married to other people at the time of the alleged crimes — arguing that it could unfairly influence the jury.
The Sherman division of the Eastern District of Texas, from which jurors will be selected, is in a rural area of the state that is religious and conservative.
During the first trial, jurors heard sensational details about sexual liaisons including multiple affairs by Mark Jordan and the defendants’ cruelty toward their spouses. They heard from former lovers and spouses, read racy emails, and listened to secret wiretaps.
The two defense teams said in a recent joint filing that the government’s strategy during the second trial would “invite confusion” between the couple’s repeated lies about their affair and accusations of illegal bribes.
The attorneys wrote that the prosecution “is premised primarily on sex.”
But prosecutors maintain that the couple’s use of lies and deception to hide their affair is relevant because it was part of an overall scheme to conceal their corrupt dealings. The lies about their romance also relate to the Jordans’ “intent, motive, and knowledge,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Jackson in a court filing.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Eason said prior to the first trial that a thing of value in a bribery case does not have to be limited to money.
“The government intends to introduce evidence that Maczka placed a high value on the time and attention of Jordan, an attractive, younger and very wealthy man,” Eason said in a court filing.
Cash and a job
Another thing of value Mark Jordan is accused of giving to Laura Jordan in exchange for her help is a job after she left the council — as a leasing agent at his company, Sooner Management. She did not, however, have a real estate license, prosecutors said.
That led to an investigation by the Texas Real Estate Commission, which suspended Mark Jordan in 2019 after finding that he violated state law by having Laura Jordan perform real estate work without a license.
“The government will contend that Mark Jordan’s offer of a job for which Laura Jordan was not qualified, and Laura Jordan’s acceptance of it, was part of the corrupt activity underlying the charges,” Jackson said in a recent filing.
The offer of employment also played a role in a different North Texas federal bribery trial involving a developer and former city council member that recently ended in a conviction. In that trial, Dallas developer Ruel Hamilton was found to have given Carolyn Davis a lobbying job after she left the Dallas City Council to reward her for her support of his housing projects.
Prosecutors say Laura Jordan also received $18,000 in cash, $40,000 by check and $24,000 in home renovations from Mark Jordan in exchange for her votes.
When she was mayor, she repeatedly failed to disclose on her taxes and in city financial disclosure forms the gifts Mark Jordan gave her, including money and luxury hotel stays, according to prosecutors.
Defense attorneys during the first trial said the case was about “courtship,” not corruption, and that people having affairs usually lie about them.
But Eason told jurors that the Jordans continued to lie about their lavish trips together and other gifts even after their spouses learned of the affair.
The prosecution put forth the testimony of Mark Jordan’s ex-wife as well as his former lover, both of whom told jurors that the developer admitted to using the mayor to get his favorable zoning. But defense attorney Dan Cogdell spent considerable time attacking their credibility, portraying them as angry and bitter.
Interference
It didn’t take long for the case to derail.
During the March 2019 deliberations, Juror No. 11, who was not identified, reported being “very upset” about being a holdout on the jury. She worried about causing a hung jury. The stress was so bad, she felt “physically ill” and asked to be excused.
Mazzant met with her in his chambers in an attempt to resolve the issue, and she left in better spirits. Later that day, the jury reached a unanimous verdict — to convict the couple on almost all of the counts.
But then some law clerks learned that one of the court officers had also spoken to the worried juror and given her advice — about 30 minutes before the verdict. The officer told her to “put her emotions aside,” not worry about the potential sentences, and to decide the case based on whether she believed the Jordans were guilty.
The defense immediately objected. The government, however, argued that the officer’s remarks were “innocuous” and merely mirrored the court’s jury instructions.
But Mazzant said the officer’s comments to the juror were either incorrect, “ripe for misinterpretation” or prejudicial. He wrote that the court officer should not have told the juror to decide the case based on whether she thought the Jordans were guilty or not.
“Jurors are not supposed to convict defendants based on their personal beliefs as to whether they committed the criminal acts in question,” Mazzant wrote. “They are to determine whether the Government has proven guilt ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’”
Mazzant ruled that the court officer’s comments to the hold-out juror prior to the verdict “likely altered the course of deliberations in a meaningful way.”
