Of the string of Alaska politicians publicly charged in a sweeping federal probe of public corruption, Bruce Weyhrauch is the only one still awaiting trial. Like a handful of his contemporaries in the Alaska State Legislature, Weyhrauch is accused of being overly cozy with oil men during his term, and of too liberally blurring the already murky lines between lobbying and loyalties, promises and influence-peddling.

One of prosecutors' claims against Weyhrauch is that he failed to disclose that he was looking for work with an oil services company, VECO, during his term as legislator who would be voting on matters important to the company. Weyhrauch, an attorney, had hoped to do legal work for VECO. Weyhrauch's attorneys had argued prosecutors were unfairly trying to bring Weyhrauch's alleged job-seeking efforts into play, and also believed the so-called "honest services" statute was overly vague. Prosecutors, they said, had too liberally applied the statute in attempting to make their case against Weyhrauch.

The justices of the high court wiped out an earlier decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, allowing prosecutors to raise Weyhrauch's job-seeking efforts at trial, and returned the issue to the lower court for further review. The 9th Circuit must now decide, given the justices' narrowing of the use of honest services fraud statute to bribes and kickbacks, whether undisclosed job solicitations qualify as criminalized wrongdoing.

Although the Weyhrauch ruling was a small aspect of a larger U.S. Supreme Court case involving similar issues, Skilling v. USA (PDF), the decision has opened the door for politicians and executives in other fraud cases around the nation to seek to have charges dropped, convictions reversed and, in some cases, to be released from jail. From newspaper magnates to political operatives, disgraced big-wigs caught up in self-serving schemes have a glimmer of hope.

"I was grateful they narrowed it to bribes and kickbacks," said Weyhrauch's attorney, Doug Pope. But in that narrowing, Pope also believes the judiciary went too far -- moving into the realm on rewriting the statute instead of merely analyzing it. If Congress wanted a narrow definition it would have written the law that way to begin with, he said.

"If I had been on the court I would have voted to throw it out," he said of the honest services fraud law, which essentially says public officials and executives must not deprive the public or shareholders of their "intangible right" to receive "honest services." The law was rewritten in 1987 after a court challenge struck it down, and Pope and others believe the rewrite, which has been in place for more than two decades, is too broad.

"I am a firm believer that if the court gives too much deference to the legislature then it's not fulfilling its role. And if you start rewriting the statue to avoid the unconstitutional issue then you've given up some of your power of the judiciary to the legislative branch, and they are supposed to be co-equal," he said.

In light of its ruling in the Skilling case, the high court kicked Weyhrauch's case back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for review. Meanwhile, honest services defendants around the nation are seizing the opportunity to revisit their plights, too.