Frances P. Driscoll gets a hug from a supporter after a federal court jury acquits her of a corruption charge.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE –– In a dramatic ending to a long, hard-fought legal struggle, a federal jury yesterday convicted former Roger Williams Medical Center President Robert A. Urciuoli of corruption charges but acquitted another former hospital executive, Frances P. Driscoll.

After deliberating for just over four days, the jury of nine women and three men convicted Urciuoli of one count of conspiracy and 35 counts of mail fraud.

A lawyer for Urciuoli, the once high-flying hospital executive who now faces prison, vowed to continue the fight with an appeal.

Driscoll was acquitted of the lone count against her –– aiding and abetting Urciuoli in his scheme to defraud the citizens of Rhode Island of the honest services of a former state senator, John A. Celona of North Providence.

The verdict came nearly five years after the federal corruption probe of Celona began, and two years after Urciuoli and Driscoll were convicted in a trial in which the verdict was later overturned, forcing this trial. After the first trial, Urciuoli had been sentenced to three years in prison and Driscoll to eight months.

Urciuoli faces sentencing on March 6, 2009. The judge immediately ordered his travel restricted to Rhode Island and visits to his lawyers in Boston.

The verdict also came about a month after the second trial began, a trial that was prolonged a week after Driscoll sustained serious injuries in a fall on the courthouse steps following the closing arguments.

Driscoll, a 69-year-old grandmother who had been rushed to Rhode Island Hospital by ambulance after her fall, found herself being rushed back from a doctor’s appointment at Rhode Island Hospital yesterday morning to hear the verdict. She rose from her wheelchair, assisted by her two lawyers, when court clerk John Duhamel read the jury’s verdict:

“Not guilty.”

Driscoll’s daughter, Deirdre, gasped in relief and began sobbing quietly. She clutched the hand of her father, Don, who exhaled deeply.

Later, outside the courthouse, Deirdre Driscoll voiced her family’s relief that “this agonizing process” has finally ended with her mother’s “total exoneration.”

Driscoll still faces a long convalescence, compounded by the deterioration of her and her husband’s health during their legal ordeal, said their daughter.

“We are still standing, or in this case sitting in a wheelchair,” said Deirdre Driscoll, standing beside her mother outside the courthouse. “She is completely free from a misguided prosecution. Our hearts go out to the entire Urciuoli family.”

As the verdict was read, the Driscolls’ tears of joy quickly contrasted with the stoic faces of Urciuoli’s wife, Donna Paolino Urciuoli; his brother-in-law, former Providence Mayor Joseph Paolino Jr., and his father-in-law, Joseph Paolino.

Urciuoli, 61, stood with his lawyer, Howard M. Cooper, supporting him with his arm behind his back. Urciuoli remained stoic, but his body sagged slightly as the clerk intoned “Guilty” for each of the 36 counts against him.

The verdict represents a victory for U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente and Operation Dollar Bill, a wide-ranging State House corruption probe that had suffered a setback in May when a federal jury acquitted two former CVS executives of similar charges of hiring Celona as a consultant to do the drugstore chain’s political bidding on pharmacy-related legislation.

The credibility of Celona, who had testified for six days in the first Roger Williams trial, was so damaged by the end of the CVS trial that prosecutors chose not to call him as a witness in this trial. That deprived the defense of Celona’s inconsistencies and combative demeanor on the stand, but also posed a challenge to the prosecution to present a document-heavy case without a central witness to tie it together.

Instead, it was left to the prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Luis Matos and Dulce Donovan, to lead the jury through a maze of memos, faxes and e-mails between Celona, Urciuoli and Driscoll. That was evident in the closing arguments, when defense lawyers repeatedly attacked Matos by name and urged jurors to follow the evidence, not the prosecutor’s closing statements.

The jurors, who made a pact not to talk to the media, apparently spent a lot of time last week poring over some of the hundreds of documents introduced during the trial. One of their first requests when they began deliberations was an overhead projector so that they could look at exhibits as a group. But that technology was not available, so they had to go about it the old-fashioned way.

The jurors, who began their fifth day of deliberations at 9 a.m. yesterday, reached a verdict after about an hour. About 30 minutes later, at 10:45, they marched business-like into the courtroom, looking down or straight ahead, but not at the defendants.

Afterward, two jurors who declined to give their names because of the pact, one man and one woman, expressed frustration but declined to elaborate.

“The law’s the law,” said the man, when asked to explain the verdict. “It’s not what I think. You can write that down.”

The female juror, who could be seen shaking her head no as the Urciuoli verdict was read, said afterward that the deliberations “were horrible.” Asked by a reporter what swayed her in the verdict, she said: “It’s like I drive to work every day on the [Route] 6/10 connector. We all drive over the speed limit but if I get caught does that mean I didn’t do anything wrong? No.”

She added that Celona’s absence from the trial played no role.

“I didn’t even know who John Celona was,” she said. “I didn’t know he was a [state] senator.”

Following the verdict, Corrente was the first to emerge from the courthouse, flanked by prosecutors Matos and Donovan.

“It was the right decision in respect to Mr. Urciuoli,” said Corrente.

Asked about Driscoll’s acquittal, Corrente replied: “I’m not disappointed. I think the case went in as well as it possibly could go in and we respect what the jury came up with.”

Going into the trial, Corrente said he didn’t believe that Celona’s testimony was necessary to secure a conviction, because of all the documentary evidence.

“A lot of the case really rested on the words of Senator Celona and the words of Mr. Urciolli and Miss Driscoll themselves as exchanged in their correspondence and e-mail traffic,” said Corrente. “That was the core of the case and the jury got it.”

The paper trail, said Corrente, “showed what was going on here was Senator Celona was on the medical center’s payroll and they asked him flat out to do their legislative bidding and that’s what he did. And the jury got it.”

Among those in the courtroom for the verdict was a lawyer monitoring the trial for CVS, former Rhode Island Attorney General Jeffrey B. Pine.

One matter that has not been publicly resolved in Operation Dollar Bill is former Senate President William V. Irons’ dealings as an insurance broker with CVS, whose chief executive, Thomas Ryan, is a personal friend.

The Providence Journal, whose stories about Celona’s financial arrangements with CVS, Roger Williams and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island sparked the federal influence-peddling probe, has also reported that Irons has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions on a CVS health-insurance contract with Blue Cross –– even though the ex-Blue Cross official who negotiated the deal says Irons did no work to secure it.

Irons, through his lawyer, has said that Irons asked Ryan if the CVS president would have any objection to him collecting the commissions, which were paid by Blue Cross. Irons says the commissions were legitimate payment for his work servicing the contract.

Another former lawmaker, ex-House Majority Leader Gerard M. Martineau, is in federal prison after pleading guilty to selling his office for hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions from CVS and Blue Cross for the sale of paper and plastic bags.

Prosecutors have also reached a deferred-prosecution agreement with Roger Williams and struck a deal with Blue Cross, forcing internal reforms and requiring Rhode Island’s dominant insurer to pay $20 million for affordable health care in the state.

Several other politicians have become the subject of investigations by a task force that includes the FBI, the U.S. Department of Labor and the Rhode Island State Police.

Investigators have asked questions about Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano’s legal work for banks. They have looked at the investment-advice business of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves, who recently lost a closely contested primary in West Warwick, and Senate Deputy Majority Whip Daniel DaPonte, who worked with Alves, as well as the dealings of former senator and Blue Cross lobbyist Thomas Lynch. And they have looked into the relationship of two state representatives, John DeSimone and Robert Flaherty, to the Beacon Mutual Insurance Co.

All of those officials have denied any impropriety, and no charges have been filed.

As for the future course of Operation Dollar Bill, Corrente said, “We will have more to say as things move along.”

Shortly after Corrente departed the courthouse steps, Urciuoli emerged, hugging his wife. Urciuoli had nothing to say, but his lawyer, Howard M. Cooper, described the verdict as “completely against the evidence that was presented in this case.”

Cooper pointed out that, in 1997, the hospital’s then-legal counsel, James R. McGuirk, told Urciuoli that he could hire Celona. Cooper also argued, as he and co-counsel Michael Connolly had throughout the trial, that the state Ethics Commission approved the hiring, provided that Celona did not act on legislation that directly affected the hospital.

While Celona was paid $260,000 as a consultant from 1998 to 2004, ostensibly to promote the hospital among senior citizens, Urciuoli, said Cooper, “pocketed no money for himself and at all times acted in the hospital’s best interest.”

Cooper vowed that he will appeal the convictions and said he is confident that the verdict will once again be reversed.

Urciuoli and his supporters had seemed shaken Friday afternoon, after the jury asked the judge to elaborate on the meaning of the words “willfully” and “voluntarily” in the aiding-and-abetting charge against Driscoll. That seemed to indicate that the jurors had already decided the guilt of Urciuoli and were debating whether to also convict Driscoll, against whom there was much less evidence.

The judge told them that their question was too broad, and referred them back to her written instructions on the law. Shortly thereafter, the jurors asked for a dictionary, which the judge also denied. At the end of the day Friday, when she dismissed them, Lisi told the jurors not to consult any outside sources but to stick to the evidence and the law.

After yesterday’s verdict, the jurors slipped out of a side door of the courthouse on Washington Street, into the bright sun that had recently emerged from behind the clouds. Eight of them –– six women and two men –– walked together for the last time through Burnside Park, politely declining a reporter’s questions.

With staff reports from Tom Mooney and Peter B. Lord

mstanton@projo.com