A federal appeals court affirmed the convictions yesterday of former United Public Workers union boss Gary Rodrigues and his daughter, Robin Rodrigues Sabatini, but that doesn't mean the two will be heading off to prison anytime soon, Rodrigues' lawyer said.

Doran Weinberg, the attorney who represented Rodrigues at trial and on appeal, said he and Sabatini's attorney now have 14 days to ask that the same three-judge panel that issued yesterday's opinion rehear the case or that the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hear the appeal.

And depending how those two alternatives go, there is an outside chance that Rodrigues' 2002 guilty verdict might be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Weinberg said yesterday from his office in San Francisco.

Rodrigues was convicted of 101 felony counts, including mail fraud and embezzling union money. U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra sentenced him to five years and four months in prison in 2003 but ruled that the ex-union leader could remain free pending appeal.

Sabatini, who was convicted of 95 criminal counts, including mail fraud and money laundering, was sentenced in 2003 to a 46-month prison term. She was also allowed to remain free while the case was being appealed.

Neither could be reached yesterday to comment on the appeals court ruling.

Weinberg said he was "absolutely stunned" by the decision. He said he had been "in contact" with Rodrigues about the ruling but declined to say how Rodrigues reacted to the news.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Florence Nakakuni, the lead prosecutor in the case, said she was "very pleased" with the ruling affirming the verdicts against Rodrigues and Sabatini.

She said the prosecution will wait to see which direction the defense attorneys decide to go with the case and then react accordingly.

The three-judge panel remanded a portion of the case to Ezra to see if he would have handed down the same sentences to Rodrigues and Sabatini had Ezra realized federal sentencing guidelines in place at the time were advisory and not mandatory.

A Supreme Court decision subsequent to the sentences imposed by Ezra in the Rodrigues case made it clear that sentencing guidelines were not meant to be absolute and inflexible.

"We've had any number of cases come back in light of that ruling and it has not been a problem," Nakakuni said.

During the months-long trial, the prosecution maintained Rodrigues hired his daughter as a consultant to the 12,000-member union on healthcare and other benefit issues and paid her a hefty salary for doing little or no real work. The arrangement was hidden from rank-and-file union members, the prosecution claimed.

But at trial and on appeal, Weinberg argued that the health and dental benefits contracts that Rodrigues negotiated on behalf of the union were so favorable to the members that they wound up paying less than members of other unions despite Rodrigues' daughter being hired as a consultant.

Weinberg maintains that jurors in the case were given a faulty instruction on what constitutes denial of "honest services" by someone who has a "fiduciary responsibility" to union members such as Rodrigues.

"It's very likely that we are going to ask the entire (9th Circuit) Court to rehear the appeal," Weinberg said. "And, it's entirely possible that we may go to the Supreme Court," he said.

Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com.