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Battista made the best deal he could in Donaghy case

The NBA betting scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy rocked the league in the summer of 2007, and its reverberations reached the Philadelphia area. Donaghy and his partners all had Delaware County roots, having attending Cardinal O'Hara High. Sean Patrick Griffin, a professor of criminal justice at Penn State Abington, has written a new book, "Gaming the Game," which provides insights into the role of professional gambler James Battista, who was sentenced to 15 months for making bets on NBA games based on Donaghy's tips. In yesterday and today's Daily News we are printing excerpts to shed more light on Battista and the gambling scandal. The excerpts are reprinted with permission of Barricade Books, Fort Lee, N.J. (http://www.barricadebooks.com/). The book's release date was yesterday.

Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy spent 15 months in prison for his involvement in gambling. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, file)
Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy spent 15 months in prison for his involvement in gambling. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, file)Read more

The NBA betting scandal involving referee Tim Donaghy rocked the league in the summer of 2007, and its reverberations reached the Philadelphia area. Donaghy and his partners all had Delaware County roots, having attending Cardinal O'Hara High. Sean Patrick Griffin, a professor of criminal justice at Penn State Abington, has written a new book, "Gaming the Game," which provides insights into the role of professional gambler James Battista, who was sentenced to 15 months for making bets on NBA games based on Donaghy's tips. In yesterday and today's Daily News we are printing excerpts to shed more light on Battista and the gambling scandal. The excerpts are reprinted with permission of Barricade Books, Fort Lee, N.J. (http://www.barricadebooks.com/). The book's release date was yesterday.

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TIM DONAGHY'S character and credibility were certain to be a liability for the government's case, and authorities knew as much when they debated moving to trial against Battista.

The U.S. Attorney's Office, as was its protocol, had already conducted its own assessment of how Donaghy would fare on the stand, and was well aware the case rested largely on someone with plenty of baggage. Prosecutors also knew that Jack McMahon was a skilled cross-examiner and a feisty trial lawyer, who could make considerable hay with a cooperating witness like Tim Donaghy on the stand. There was also the more basic issue of taking a case based primarily on a cooperating witness to trial. As one experienced prosecutor says in this regard, "Who knows what you're gonna get with a cooperating witness at trial? Any cooperating witness case is a tough one at trial because there's always a chance the jury is going to reject the credibility of the cooperator or just not be happy that there's a rat on the stand."

In addition to these assessments, the U.S. Attorney's Office was also addressing the issue of venue, which McMahon had raised long before. "The first time I was driving back from the courtroom in Brooklyn in August [2007]," McMahon says, "I said to myself, 'Why were we just in Brooklyn? Why is the venue Brooklyn?' I called the Assistant U.S. Attorney soon after that and asked him, and his answer was unconvincing.

There was a reason for that - there was no venue in Brooklyn!

Their main argument as to why the venue was the Eastern District of New York was that this guy from the NBA would go back and look at game tapes every night, and he lived somewhere in the Eastern District so that somehow gave Brooklyn venue. When I heard that, I laughed and thought, 'You've got to be kidding.' "

In the "motion to dismiss due to proper venue" filing with the court, McMahon noted among other things that the government admitted that none of the scheme's bets, meetings, or officiated games took place in the Eastern District of New York.

"We had filed a change-of-venue motion with the Court," McMahon says, "and there was a scheduled hearing about the issue. About two days before the hearing, the government approached us about a plea deal that would be just for illegal gambling, meaning they would drop the wire fraud. That was the first time they offered that to us. Until then, there was no chance we were going to accept a plea. We were going to have our day in court and go to trial."

"Jack told [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Jeff Goldberg right after I was indicted that if I could plead guilty to illegal gambling that I'd be up there the next day," Battista says. "I wasn't denying I was a gambler, I was just denying I defrauded the NBA. Well, about a week after Tommy accepted his deal, we were scheduled to go up and fight for venue. Goldberg called Jack up just before the venue hearing and said he'd drop the wire fraud. I'd just have to say that I was a gambler and that I masterminded the scheme."

"Originally," Jack McMahon says, "when we were offered the deal for just illegal gambling, Jimmy still said, 'No. We're going to trial.' He really wanted to put Donaghy on the stand and expose all of his lies. It wasn't until I explained to Jimmy that it was in his best interest to plead guilty that he reconsidered his opinion of how to move forward. I told him, 'You've got kids, man. If this was just you and you wanted to rock and roll and go at this guy, I am ready for it, but you've got a wife and kids and this decision isn't just for yourself.' That's what eventually convinced him to take the plea. Besides, everyone knew he was an illegal gambler, so we weren't going to win on that charge. We'd probably beat Donaghy up and win on the wire fraud, but the government was giving us that, so why go to trial?"

The hard-charging Battista's thought process in deciding whether to take the deal was indeed preoccupied with Tim Donaghy, but he acquiesced to McMahon's sober counsel. "I think the government knew they would have had a hard time if they tried the case against me because Elvis lied so much," Battista says. "Any jury would have ripped him, and would have been like, 'This doesn't make any sense.' But, the fact of the matter is that I did gamble illegally. I was a gambler, I claimed it for a living, and I didn't deny it. I accepted that responsibility. As long as they dropped the fraud and wire fraud, the most serious offenses, I considered it a win. I never asked Elvis to fix a game. Now, in my mind did I think something was going on? Absolutely. He was a greedy [guy], and he needed to know the number we got before he went out there each game." *