Will 30 months in prison improve Erin Kenny’s memory?

Are you confident you received complete cooperation from Erin Kenny?

Ever the man who chooses his words carefully, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Schiess flashed a bright smile and held it. He paused for the longest time in the hallway outside U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson's courtroom before answering.

"I repeatedly asked her about the scope of her activities, and she consistently told me what she did," Schiess replied.

I'll leave it to others to decide whether Schiess was merely being prudent or allowing for a little investigative wiggle room. To me, his answer was less than a ringing vote of confidence in the devotion to detail of his star-crossed cooperating witness. But in complex public corruption cases, you take your allies where you find them. In the case of the corrupt Clark County commissioners, the FBI and U.S. attorney found an ally in Kenny.

Overall, that alliance paid dividends for the government in what is unquestionably the biggest political corruption case in Southern Nevada in more than a quarter century.

Schiess had reason to smile Wednesday. A major and tricky phase of the corruption case had ended with Kenny receiving a 30-month sentence and being ordered to pay fines and forfeitures totaling $200,000.

Schiess had argued sincerely, if not vociferously, for 24 months. But he was quick to disagree when defense attorney Frank Cremen implored the court to give Kenny fewer than two years, in part because the Review-Journal has been so unkind to her.

Schiess countered that a sentence of less than 24 months would harm the balance between encouraging cooperation and punishing a corrupt public official.

Dawson rightly weighed Kenny's cooperation with her unvarnished avarice and her dramatic betrayal of the public trust. She received 30 months, but chances are good any 12 Las Vegans you ask would have given her 30 years.

Surely attorney Cremen and Kenny's circle of supporters believe their girl has suffered enough, and my speculation only adds to her misery. Hey, I'm all torn up about it.

She fueled such talk when, under oath but unconvincingly, she claimed she suffered from memory loss due to vertigo when it came to answering sticky questions that were outside her comfort zone. We have since learned her vertigo was self-diagnosed.

We've also learned that she received $16,800 per month as a government affairs consultant for local developer Jim Rhodes, even after she pleaded guilty to a variety of charges related to her corrupt behavior. That's $201,600 a year for a job with no discernible "In" basket. It's a payment that criminal defense attorney Dominic Gentile recently called "hush" money.

It was also Gentile who called Kenny an irreparably damaged witness after a jury refused to convict his client, real estate consultant Donald Davidson, of several federal charges that hinged largely on her testimony. But I'm not so sure about that.

She may be permanently jammed up as a trial witness, but there's little doubt that Kenny remains capable of helping investigators ferret out the facts in their ongoing investigation.

We've already learned that she wore a wire in a conversation with a local politically connected attorney, who apparently didn't rise to the bait. She had the run of another law firm when it came to squeezing developers for campaign contributions.

Are those clues about additional possible corruption in the community?

It's a small question, but I'd like to know who paid for the handsome, expensive draperies that hang in Kenny's house. And innumerable readers are asking about other benefits she received, but failed to report, from local business owners while in office.

Her 30-month sentence is important: Not just for the message it sends the citizenry and our elected officials, but also for the impact it might have on Kenny.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking and she hasn't a single additional relevant fact left to share.

"She has not deviated one iota," said Schiess, who was flanked by FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey.

So there it is. Case closed.

Right?

Call me dizzy, but I still wonder whether Erin Kenny's vertigo will gradually improve as she squats in a federal prison cell, contemplates her next bland meal and considers where all her fair-weather friends have gone.

There's nothing like a 30-month stretch in an enclosed space surrounded by a tough constituency to jog a person's memory.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.