Constitution blocks Bolus' pathway to office
Published: July 4, 2009
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share thisWith vacation time upon us, it's time for a timeless column.
Actually, this one is about a timeless matter - Republican businessman Bob Bolus and his likely inability to serve if he's ever elected to a public office.
Aside from his lack of enough votes to win whenever he runs, Bob Bolus' 1991 felony convictions will probably always thwart him from serving unless the convictions are overturned.
At the moment, he can't serve if elected because of a state Supreme Court ruling that found felony convictions are the kinds of crimes that the state constitution says prevent someone from serving in an elected office.
After reading for years about his quests for public office - this year he ran for and lost the Republican nomination for mayor - you must be wondering by now about that Supreme Court case.
Well, it all began in 1842, and later there was a gun.
First, the gun.
In 1979, a man held his former girlfriend at gunpoint in a King of Prussia parking lot. We won't name the man because he served his time and paid his debt to society so long ago, it wouldn't be fair to bring it up with the man no longer in the public eye.
He pleaded guilty that August in Montgomery County Court to unlawful restraint, making terrorist threats, carrying a firearm without a license, possession of an instrument of crime and recklessly endangering another person.
The court sentenced him to five years of probation, a $500 fine and psychiatric treatment.
Eight years later, clearly back in control of his senses, the man decided to run for public office.
He ran for councilman in Birdsboro borough, Berks County. He won the seat. He served a four-year term, then won another in November 1993.
By then, someone had found out about his past, because in January 1994, the Berks County district attorney went to county court to remove him. The DA argued that under Article II, Section 7 of the state constitution, the man could not serve.
That section says: "No person hereafter convicted of embezzlement of public moneys, bribery, perjury or other infamous crime, shall be eligible to the General Assembly or capable of holding any office of trust or profit in this Commonwealth."
The district attorney said the man's crimes were "infamous," just like the constitution said.
The county court agreed, citing the fact that his conviction disqualified him from serving as a juror. It ordered him removed from the council.
The case wound up before the Supreme Court, where the man tried several arguments to combat the district attorney.
For one, he said the district attorney's move to remove him amounted to additional punishment beyond his original plea agreement. The court dismissed that, saying the point of removing him was to assure "the good character" of elected officials, not punishment.
The Birdsboro councilman also tried to say the Berks County DA had no jurisdiction because the case happened in Montgomery County and the DA waited too long to challenge him, anyway. No dice on both counts, the court said.
He had more luck arguing the definition of an infamous crime.
The Supreme Court looked back - way back - all the way to 1842.
Back then, the court, ruling on whether someone could be a witness in a case, focused on the definition of "infamy," which comes from the same root word as "infamous."
The 1842 ruling said infamous crimes that disqualify someone from being a witness are "treason, felony" and other crimes that involve "falsehood, and affect the administration of public justice."
Since then, the court said, it consistently applied the definition, once in case of a judge convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, once when a councilman took a $10,000 bribe.
In the Birdsboro case, the court reaffirmed the standard in a May 18, 2000, ruling, but actually overturned the lower court and let the man remain a councilman.
As reprehensible as the councilman's crime was, it wasn't a felony and didn't involve a "charge of falsehood that affects the administration of public justice," the court said.
Mr. Bolus was convicted in Lackawanna County Court of receiving stolen property and criminal conspiracy in a case that involved the way he acquired some machinery. Both charges were felonies.
And that's the back story to why Mr. Bolus probably won't ever be able to serve unless he gets his conviction overturned.
You can bet he'll keep trying.
BORYS KRAWCZENIUK, Times-Tribune politics reporter, writes Random Notes.
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