Ex-Pa.
senator re-sentenced to 61 months in prison, up from 55 months, in ...
Washington Post By Associated Press, November 10
PHILADELPHIA — A long-powerful Pennsylvania
senator was re-sentenced Thursday to 61 months in prison in a sprawling
corruption case, just above the 55-month sentence thrown out by a U.S.
appeals court.
The case against Philadelphia
Democrat Vincent Fumo went back to the same judge,
who accused prosecutors Thursday of abusing their power by overcharging the
case. Prosecutors firmly denied the characterization. They had sought a
guideline sentence of at least 17 years.
“In spite of the 137 counts, not one involved bribery or
honest services fraud,” Senior U.S.
District Judge Ronald Buckwalter said. “There are
considerable differences between his actions and political corruption cases
involving graft.”
Fumo was convicted of defrauding the state Senate, a South
Philadelphia nonprofit and a seaport museum by co-opting their
staff and resources from 1991 to 2007. Senate staff renovated his mansion; the
nonprofit provided luxury cars and political polling; the museum chartered
yachts for vacations to Martha’s Vineyard.
Fumo didn’t need the money. He made $13 million selling a family bank in 2007,
and earned $1 million a year to steer clients to a Philadelphia law firm and another $100,000 a
year from the Senate. But his personal ethos, according to trial testimony, was
to buy things with “OPM” — Other People’s Money.
Fumo’s net worth topped $11 million in 2009, when he was originally sentenced.
However, he said he has spent $4 million on defense lawyers and he’s paying
$3.4 million in restitution.
“I made money. Unfortunately, I made it just in time to
pay for this case,” said Fumo, whose appearance has
gone from dapper to disheveled.
Prison emails show him worried about whether he’ll still
have money, when he gets out, to fill the tank of a
yacht.
The voluminous emails may have cost Fumo
the extra six months.
Prison emails are monitored for security purposes.
Despite warnings from his lawyers, Fumo rants at
prosecutors, reporters, political enemies and anyone who crossed him at his
five-month trial. He called the jury “dumb, corrupt and prejudiced.”
Buckwalter took offense at that last attack.
“The defendant still seems to have no true sense of
remorse, and no sorrow for his crimes. I think his true sense of remorse is for
the condition he finds himself in,” Buckwalter said.
Fumo talked to the judge for an hour Thursday in what he called a “stream of
consciousness” essay. He mostly talked about the indignities of prison, even at
the minimum-security camp in Ashland,
Ky., where he has spent the past
two years.
He said he had been strip-searched repeatedly, put in
“the hole,” or isolation, and sometimes denied the medicines he takes for
anxiety, tremors, heart disease and other ailments.
The defense wanted Buckwalter
to keep the original sentence because of Fumo’s age
and health problems, but the judge denied leniency on those grounds. A prison
doctor testified that his health has actually improved in prison, where he’s
been weaned from some prescription drugs.
Instead, Buckwalter chafed at
federal sentencing guidelines for fraud. He complained they’re based solely on
the dollar amount of the fraud, rather than the broader picture of a
defendant’s crimes. He cited other political corruption cases across the
country where defendants got about four to seven years for their crimes, and
found Fumo’s case comparable.
Fumo spent three decades in the state Senate, becoming one of the most powerful
lawmakers of the past generation before his fall from grace.
Prosecutors call the scope of his crimes “breathtaking,”
and said the obstruction topped any case prosecuted in eastern Pennsylvania in 30
years. Fumo — who beat two other indictments early in
his political career — had Senate computer technicians destroy evidence from
computers and blackberries to try to thwart the FBI investigation. One of them, sentenced by a different judge, got 30 months despite
his guilty plea.
Prosecutors say the prison emails show Fumo preparing to exact revenge when he gets out.
For his part, Fumo told the
judge he was not alone in using Senate staff for personal and political chores.
He says the practice was commonplace in the Pennsylvania Senate.
“I don’t mean to minimize what I did by saying others did
it, but, your honor, it was institutionalized,” Fumo
said.
Fumo still owns five homes: a Philadelphia
mansion, two homes at the New Jersey shore, a farm near Harrisburg, and a
waterfront estate in Florida.
Prosecutors said they were disappointed by the sentence,
and will consider a second appeal. However, they see a need for finality at
some point.
“At the end of the day, we are going home to our families
tonight, and Vince Fumo is not because of the crimes
he engaged in,” U.S.
Attorney Zane Memeger said. “Neither you nor I would
want to spend 61 months in prison.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ex-pa-senator-re-sentenced-to-61-months-in-prison-up-from-55-months-in-corruption-case/2011/11/10/gIQAQNJS9M_story.html
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Prosecutors Lose Corruption Case
Wall Street Journal BY TAMER EL-GHOBASHY Nov 11, 2011
New York state Assemblyman William Boyland
Jr. was acquitted Thursday of federal corruption charges, representing the
first loss for prosecutors in a wide-ranging case that ensnared Albany
politicians, a lobbyist and executives.
A jury found Mr. Boyland not
guilty of charges he had taken $175,000 in bribes to help secure funding for a
Brooklyn and Queens hospital
network.
The verdict in U.S.
District Court in Manhattan
came on the third day of deliberations that had been marked by the loss of one
juror and a panel that repeatedly said it was deadlocked. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577030553758116734.html?mod=googlenews_wsj