• Federal prosecutors oppose both motions, which Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres is expected to hear next Thursday.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- A federal judge will decide next week whether Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. can have a separate trial on four charges that accuse him of extorting a free lifetime membership in the exclusive University Club.
Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres has also set for next week a hearing on a motion by the mayor's chief of staff, Artin H. Coloian, to be tried separately from the mayor and his other codefendants charged in the case the federal government has dubbed Operation Plunder Dome.
For now, all five defendants in the case are scheduled to be tried together on 29 corruption charges, beginning the week of April 15. A sixth defendant, former tax official Joseph A. Pannone, has entered into plea agreement with the government.
The hearing on the Cianci and Coloian motions for separate trials is scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m. before Torres.
Prosecutors are opposing both motions.
Cianci has claimed in court papers that his right to a fair trial would be prejudiced if he were forced to stand trial on the University Club charges at the same time as the other counts he faces, but there is little elaboration in the public court record.
The mayor's lawyer, Richard M. Egbert, has filed a memorandum of law with the judge but that has not been placed in the public record.
Coloian's memo explaining his reasons for wanting a separate trial has been made public. In it, he argues that he would be prejudiced by having to face trial with any of the other defendants because he is charged with only two offenses -- federal conspiracy and bribery -- in connection with an alleged $5,000 bribe paid to secure a job for Christopher J. Ise in the Department of Planning and Development. (The indictment alleges that David Ead, a former city tax official, delivered a $5,000 payoff to Coloian from Ise that was meant for Cianci after the mayor arranged a job for Ise at City Hall.)
Coloian, his lawyers note, is not charged with any racketeering counts or with any conspiracies except the one count in which he is named as a defendant along with Cianci. Coloian contends that he would be severely prejudiced by being tried with the others because the government "will seek to introduce at trial scores of tape recordings that have absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Coloian. . . ."
Also scheduled next week -- at 2 p.m. Monday -- is another hearing on various other pretrial motions filed by the defendants. Those are to be heard by U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Lovegreen.
They include the defendants' motion for disclosure of all confidential informants who furnished information in the corruption probe; a motion for disclosure of all electronic surveillance conducted by the FBI that has not already been furnished; a motion to force the government to specify more fully what it actually intends to introduce as evidence at trial; a motion for production of exculpatory evidence (anything the government possesses that could be viewed as favorable to the defendants); a motion to compel the government to disclose the order in which it intends to present its evidence; and a motion for identification of all coconspirators in the case who were not charged.
