SnapGlow.TV: Modern Gems Galore! Federal prosecutors yesterday filed a scathing reply to a court filing by convicted ex- state Sen. Vince Fumo, who requested a new trial based on "newly discovered evidence" that was not previously available.
Fumo's lawyers said last week that jurors had been exposed to "extraneous and prejudicial information" about Fumo, and that U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter should summon jurors to court and question them individually.
The defense said that it learned this from Ralph Cipriano, a former Inquirer reporter and freelance writer, who had conducted post-trial interviews with jurors for a story that he was writing for Philadelphia magazine that was posted on its Web site yesterday.
Prosecutors said that that amounted to a "fatal" flaw in the defense's argument. Instead of relying on Cipriano's "ad-hoc contacts with jurors and his second-hand report," prosecutors wrote, Fumo should have sought the court's permission to contact jurors directly and obtain sworn affidavits about what outside information they may have been exposed to.
As a result, Buckwalter should reject Fumo's argument, prosecutors said, because he had not set forth "clear evidence" to justify questioning jurors and, even if he did, Fumo could not prove that they were prejudiced against him. Fumo attorney Dennis Cogan said the defense would reply to the feds' assertion in a court filing.
Prosecutors also said in their filing yesterday, citing a Third Circuit case, that courts are loathe to interrogate jurors after they've rendered verdicts.
A jury found on March 16 that Fumo defrauded the state Senate, a South Philadelphia charity that Fumo had founded and the Independence Seaport Museum, and then orchestrated an electronic coverup to try and thwart a federal investigation.
According to an affidavit by Cogan, Cipriano told him that one juror had been apprised of Fumo's 1980 federal prosecution on fraud charges (a conviction later overturned by a federal judge) and the conviction and imprisonment of former Seaport Museum president John S. Carter on fraud charges unrelated to the Fumo case.
The juror allegedly learned this from co-workers one Friday, Cipriano reported. (Fumo's trial was not conducted on Fridays.)
Cipriano, in his magazine story, identified the juror as Joanne Pinkston, a maintenance administrator at Verizon.Prosecutors said that Cipriano never sought their comment and did not contact them to discuss what jurors had allegedly told him about contacts outside court. (Buckwalter had told jurors repeatedly to avoid discussing the trial with anybody, or reading or listening to news reports, and to report any outside contacts to his deputy. None did.)
Several jurors told Cipriano that it was difficult to avoid coverage of the five-month trial.
Prosecutors said that Cipriano had contacted the spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney, Patty Hartman, advising her that he had interviewed jurors but did not disclose anything to her about outside information that jurors told him that they were exposed to during the trial.
Cipriano said that before he talked with jurors, he talked with Hartman and sent her several e-mails and she told him prosecutors would never talk to him because he was not a "real journalist," adding, "My story speaks for itself."
Cipriano had covered the trial for a legal Web site.
Prosecutors said that they later tried to talk with Cipriano but that he would not discuss his juror contacts unless he had approval from Philadelphia magazine's editor.
After leaving a voice-mail message with the editor, prosecutors said that they were contacted by an attorney for the magazine who said that Cipriano would not answer any questions from prosecutors about what he learned during his interviews of jurors, the court filing said.
Meanwhile, in a separate filing yesterday, prosecutors disputed Fumo's contention that he's not responsible for any of the $4.3 million in losses that the feds say resulted from his fraudulent schemes. (The U.S. Probation Office used the loss figure to calculate Fumo's potential prison sentence under guidelines, 21 to 27 years, in a pre-sentence report.)
A court hearing is scheduled tomorrow to discuss numerous defense objections to the report, but a major area of dispute concerns the potential fraud loss to be determined by the judge.
According to prosecutors, Fumo said in a response to the probation office's report that the Senate fraud loss of $2.4 million was based wholly on the subjective opinion of an FBI agent who prepared a chart that was shown to jurors during the trial.
Prosecutors said that the Senate loss was based on trial testimony of witnesses who said that Fumo paid them with public money to do personal and political work. Fumo also said he should not be held responsible for any of the $1.8 million loss at Citizens Alliance because its board was "complicit" in actions that might have resulted in loss. Prosecutors said that that assertion represented the "height of audacity."
Finally, Fumo argues that he should not be responsible for $102,000 worth of free cruises he took on Seaport Museum yachts because, according to prosecutors, the museum should have given him the cruises at cost (the cost of staff, supplies and wear and tear on the vessels). The feds presented evidence at trial that others would have chartered the yachts when Fumo had them and thus there was "indisputably a loss of charter income." *
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOST POPULAR PHILLY.COM PHOTOS
Daily Headlines
Subscribe now! Daily Headlines Newsletter
Philly.com news blogs
Philly.com Promotions
