Fumo challenges assignment to prison in Kentucky

With just a week before he starts serving a 55-month sentence, former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo is fighting his assignment to a prison in Kentucky, saying it is too far from home.

His defense team is contending that the 525-mile trip from Philadelphia to the "low-security" federal prison in Ashland, Ky., would be tough on Fumo's fiancée and children.

Peter Goldberger, one of his defense lawyers, noted yesterday that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons generally tries to place inmates no more than 500 miles from their families.

"It is on the outer edge of reasonableness," Goldberger said, referring to the distance. "That's the first one [prison] they gave us. But it's not settled for another week."

From Fumo's perspective, Ashland Federal Correctional Institution might have another drawback: It does not operate a residential drug- and alcohol-treatment program, according to the Bureau of Prisons' Web site.

In recent court filings, Fumo has said that he was addicted to Xanax, an antianxiety medicine, and alcohol, and needed treatment.

By enrolling in a treatment program, he conceivably could cut up to a year off his sentence.

This would be on top of the seven-month reduction he could get for "good behavior." In all, Fumo could cut his sentence to three years.

However, a member of the defense team said Fumo had not cited the lack of a drug-treatment program at Ashland as a reason to change his assignment.

In any event, the defense member added, inmates can't enroll in the program until they are within three years of release. "We're just asking that they rethink this thing so he's someplace closer," the member of the defense team said.

In all, about 1,500 men are incarcerated at a time at Ashland. Of these, about 300 are placed in a minimum-security prison camp within the prison complex. It was unclear yesterday whether Fumo had been assigned to the camp or the main prison.

When U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter sentenced the once-powerful Democrat to 55 months behind bars, Goldberger asked him to recommend that Fumo be sent to the federal prison in Lewisburg, about 60 miles north of Harrisburg.

"Lewisburg has the drug program, and we think there's going to be some work to do in helping him get off his dependence on prescription drugs," Goldberger told the judge during the July 14 sentencing hearing.

Goldberger said that Buckwalter did recommend that Fumo be sent to Lewisburg but that the Bureau of Prisons had rejected the request. He said that top prison administrators seemed to have a preference for sending prominent or powerful figures some distance from their homes.

Carla Wilson, a regional official with the Bureau of Prisons, said that the goal is to assign inmates to a prison within 500 miles of their homes, but that "sometimes there are factors" that preclude such a placement.

She declined to disclose Fumo's assigned prison, or to comment about his case. As a matter of policy, the Bureau of Prisons does not disclose inmates' assigned prisons until after they have been locked up.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Pease also declined to comment yesterday about where Fumo will report to start the sentence.

Goldberger noted that defendants sometimes can persuade the bureau to change an assignment. For example, he said, Fumo codefendant Leonard Luchko, convicted of helping Fumo stage a digital cover-up, had originally been ordered to serve his 21/2-year sentence in Ashland but was able to get that changed to the camp at Waymart, Pa.

In a legal fight that flared last week, Fumo originally sought to delay the Aug. 31 start of his sentence by arguing that he needed at least two more months free to detox from his Xanax addiction.

Pease and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Zauzmer challenged Fumo's arguments, saying that at worst, they represented "Fumo's latest effort to deceive the court and manipulate the judicial process."

Goldberger vigorously disputed that. He noted that both he and defense lawyer Dennis J. Cogan had cited Fumo's drug dependencies during the sentencing hearing.

Fumo, who was in the Senate for 30 years, was convicted in March by a federal court jury of 137 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstructing justice, and tax violations.

Buckwalter's 55-month sentence drew widespread public criticism, and federal prosecutors, who had sought a sentence of more than 15 years in prison, have filed notice of an appeal of the sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

To see the video of Vincent J. Fumo's arrival at his party Wednesday night, go to http://go.philly.com/fumobash

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