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Fumo may face lighter sentencing
With Vince Fumo's scheduled sentencing just days away, a federal judge yesterday handed up a decision that is likely to substantially reduce the prison time Fumo would serve.
The U.S. Probation Office had calculated the former state senator's "advisory guideline sentencing range" - which judges use as the starting point in fashioning an appropriate sentence - at 21 to 27 years in a pre-sentence report, which prosecutors argued was correct.
But after listening to defense objections to the report on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter issued rulings yesterday that effectively decreased Fumo's guideline range to 11 to 14 years.
Buckwalter supported defense objections that challenged enhancements of Fumo's sentence in the pre-sentence report, which had concluded that Fumo should receive more time in prison because he acted on behalf of a charitable organization and public agency, used sophisticated means to carry out his fraudulent schemes and lied while testifying in his own defense at trial.
Fumo is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.
Fumo was found guilty in March of 137 counts of defrauding the state Senate, the South Philadelphia charity Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods and the Independence Seaport Museum. He was also found guilty of trying to thwart a federal investigation and of related tax offenses.
It's possible the current guideline range could go even lower. Buckwalter said yesterday he would reserve judgment on a defense request to recommend even less time based on Fumo's 30 years of service as a state senator and a lower fraud loss.
Buckwalter pegged the total fraud loss at $2.4 million, far less than the $4.3 million calculated in the pre-sentence report. The judge put the restitution amount at slightly more than $2 million.
Buckwalter's two-page ruling did not offer any explanation for his decision.
After Buckwalter issued his ruling, prosecutors and defense attorneys filed their sentencing memorandums.
It was as if the prosecution and defense were depicting two completely different people.
Prosecutors called for a sentence of more than 15 years.
They said the central issue is "whether a powerful public official is or is not above the law and what price is to be paid for corrupt conduct and obstruction of lawful authority."
Prosecutors said Fumo should not be given leeway simply because he was an "effective" senator who brought home the bacon for worthy projects in his district. That was the job he was elected to do, they said.
In any case, the government said that Fumo should not be given a sentence inconsistent with those given to other prominent defendants convicted of public corruption here recently (Their sentences ranged from 6.5 to 15 years).
Fumo's attorneys said that even the guideline range set yesterday was "far too high" and that Buckwalter should take into account Fumo's "extraordinary" public service and his "significant" medical problems.
The defense said the guideline-range sentence "overstated" the nature of Fumo's crimes, which were more akin to financial fraud than to bribery.
As part of its sentencing memorandum, the defense cited excerpts from some of the 250 letters submitted to the court attesting to Fumo's good works.
Meanwhile, prosecutors said that at Tuesday's hearing they would seek at least five increases to Fumo's guideline range based on the harm he did to his victims and his abuse of the public trust. *
