Cianci lawyer
makes case for
two separate
trials for mayor
• A federal judge this morning will hear arguments on whether the bribery and racketeering charges should be separated from the complaint that the mayor extorted a free lifetime membership from an exclusive club.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. is confident that he can beat corruption charges the government has brought against him. But he's worried that unless he is given a separate trial on four of the charges he faces -- those that allege he extorted a free lifetime membership in the exclusive University Club -- a jury will be confused by the government's case and find him guilty.
This is what Cianci's Boston lawyer, Richard M. Egbert, argues in a memorandum of law supporting his motion to separate the government's case against the mayor into two trials -- one on the University Club charges of extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering, the other on the other 14 counts of racketeering, extortion, bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud that Cianci faces.
Cianci, the city's longest-serving mayor who has embarked on a "good government" campaign for reelection, has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges in the indictment.
Egbert's memorandum -- supplementing a motion for separate trials for Cianci -- was filed Dec. 31 with Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, the federal judge who is presiding over the mayor's case. It was placed in the public court file just a few days ago.
Torres has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. today on the mayor's motion, as well as a motion by the mayor's chief of staff, Artin H. Coloian, to be tried separately from his boss and three other codefendants -- Cianci's former top aide, Frank E. Corrente; Edward Voccola, a convicted felon and owner of property leased to the city's School Department; and Richard E. Autiello, a body-shop owner and tow operator.
All five defendants are currently scheduled to be tried together beginning the week of April 15. Prosecutors oppose splitting the case up. (A sixth defendant in the case, former tax official Joseph Pannone, entered into a plea agreement with the government in recent weeks.)
THE UNIVERSITY CLUB
charges allege that the mayor punished the club for its refusal, dating back to 1975, to make him a member by blocking building permits and threatening to shut down the club until it apologized and made him an honorary member. At one point, the indictment says, Cianci vowed to "turn the University Club into a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) club." The mayor is also charged with witness tampering for allegedly trying in the summer of 1999 to influence the grand jury testimony of a city worker, and the worker's statements to the FBI, concerning the University Club.
Egbert says in the memorandum that the University Club charges should be the subject of a separate trial because they are completely different from any of the other alleged offenses the mayor is charged with and "are the only allegations for which the government purports to have any evidence not subject to obvious and palpable doubt."
In the memorandum, the veteran defense lawyer says the reason the government wants the whole case tried together is because most of its case against Cianci is weak and it intends "to use the University Club evidence to buttress the other claims -- claims with which it has virtually nothing in common."
"Should the University Club evidence be admitted during a joint trial of all charged counts, its presence will taint every other allegation in the indictment -- allegations," Egbert asserts, "which the indictment on its face and the discovery to date indicate the government will otherwise be very hard pressed to prove."
The indictment alleges that Cianci and his codefendants took more than $1.5 million during the 1990s -- extorting cash and campaign contributions for leases, contracts, jobs, promotions and other benefits.
Count 1 of the indictment charges Cianci with leading a racketeering enterprise involving 13 different city agencies and departments, as well as his campaign organization, Friends of Cianci.
But Egbert boldly predicts in his memorandum that the government won't be able to present enough evidence at trial to make a racketeering case against the mayor, and that after prosecutors present their case, Torres will throw out the charges when the defense argues a motion for judgment of acquittal.
And if the racketeering counts are dismissed during the trial, Egbert says, the mayor "will definitely press" for a mistrial on the University Club charges -- unless they are severed from the case now.
Egbert, a veteran defense lawyer who has handled some of the most highly publicized cases in recent Rhode Island history, lays out some of the strategy he intends to use in his defense of Cianci, whom he refers to in his memorandum as "the government's most coveted target."
"Mr. Cianci's defense to the bribery and extortion charges has nothing to do with intent," Egbert says. "He does not argue, and will not argue, that he engaged in the conduct alleged, but did not harbor the requisite intent.
"To the contrary," Egbert says, "his defense is and will be that he never engaged in the conduct at all, and that the felons who claim he did are simply lying to save their own skins."
The defense lawyer -- who has earned a reputation for vigorous cross-examination of witnesses -- says that "the evidence allegedly supporting every count lodged against Mayor Cianci, other than the University Club counts, appears subject to virtually overwhelming doubt" because it is based on information from "admitted felons" -- former tax official David C. Ead, who has pleaded guilty to extorting bribes in return for property tax reductions, and Roger Cavaca, a former employee of Voccola.
The indictment claims that Voccola told Cavaca in 1992 that he was paying bribes to Cianci and Corrente -- something Egbert describes in his memorandum as "a single implausible hearsay statement" from a man who became a fugitive to avoid serving time for auto insurance fraud.
Ead, former vice chairman of the Providence tax board, is testifying against Cianci, Egbert asserts, because he awaits sentencing and hopes his testimony will result in a lesser prison term.
Part of the indictment charges Cianci, Corrente and Pannone with extorting $15,000 in bribes from the estate of buckle manufacturer Fernando M. Ronci to waive $450,000 in back property taxes in the fall of 1998. Ead has testified that he met with Cianci to arrange the payoff, $10,000 of which he alleged he delivered to Corrente. Afterward, at a Cianci fundraiser, Ead said that Cianci acknowleged receiving the $10,000.
The indictment also alleges that Ead met with Cianci to arrange a $5,000 bribe to hire Christopher J. Ise as a city planner and that when Ead took the $5,000 to the mayor's office, Cianci told him not to be nervous and to bring the money to Coloian.
Cianci is also charged with extorting about $250,000 in campaign contributions from members of the Providence Towing Association to ensure their place on the Police Department's tow list; accepting bribe money from Voccola, who received a lucrative lease from the School Department; and attempting to extort a $10,000 bribe from Antonio Freitas, who was seeking to buy two vacant lots from the city. That real estate deal was never consummated.
EGBERT, IN ARGUING
for the University Club counts to be severed, points out that they are entirely different in nature than the rest of the charges.
"The great bulk of the indictment alleges that defendants, including the mayor, took money in exchange for giving certain private citizens preferred access to city jobs, services and benefits. The motive for such crimes was simple greed, impersonal and cold."
But the University Club charges, Egbert says, "have nothing whatever to do with greed. They are the alleged product of hurt feelings and outraged pride . . . The motive for such a crime was allegedly personal and passionate -- hot with emotion: anger, humiliation and jealousy. The core claim is not that the University Club wanted something from the city, but that Mr. Cianci urgently wanted something from the University Club. And the something he allegedly wanted was not money but acceptance, status and entree. This allegation,"says Egbert, "is at the far emotional extreme from every other allegation in the case."
But Egbert also seems concerned with another issue: Unlike Ead and Cavaca, who could be easy targets on cross-examination, the people from the University Club who will be called to testify by the government are not felons with something to gain from saying bad things about the mayor.
Because the government has chosen not to prosecute officers of the University Club for bribing the mayor "or for any other crime," Egbert says, "they will take the stand unburdened by the palpable indicia of incredibility that undermines any pronouncements of David Ead."
That would make it harder to attack what they say.
