PROVIDENCE — Federal prosecutors will retry former Roger Williams Medical Center executives Robert Urciuoli and Frances Driscoll, whose convictions for allegedly paying former state Sen. John Celona to push the hospital’s legislative agenda at the State House were overturned by a federal appeals court last Friday.

In a news release issued yesterday, U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente said his office would try the defendants again because “we believe that the central allegations of the indictment remain essentially unaffected and that they remain well-founded. We will consult with the District Court and with counsel about scheduling, and we will be ready to go as soon as the court can accommodate us.”

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Boston, reversed the October 2006 convictions of Urciuoli and Driscoll because, it said, their trial judge, Senior U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, gave jurors overly broad instructions on what constituted criminal acts. The prejudicial instruction might have led jurors to convict based on actions that the appellate court said weren’t federal crimes.

The reversal centered on how broadly the government could define “official acts” of a state legislator under the federal mail-fraud statute. The appeals court said that the government should not have been allowed to introduce evidence that Celona had lobbied mayors to increase municipal ambulance runs to Roger Williams because, it said, those actions by Celona did not constitute official legislative actions taken on behalf of the hospital.

In announcing his intent to retry Urciuoli and Driscoll, Corrente said: “The court vacated the convictions because it believed that the instructions to the jury on honest services mail fraud permitted the jury to convict for conduct relating to the issue of rescue runs to Roger Williams Medical Center. Although the court stated it was ‘fairly debatable,’ it held that this conduct did not violate the federal honest services law. At the same time, however, the court held that Mr. Urciuoli could be prosecuted for using former Senator Celona to coerce health insurers into settlements with Roger Williams Medical Center. Moreover, as the court noted, the defendants did not challenge the convictions as they related to using former Senator Celona ‘to promote or block legislation to favor Roger Williams.’ ”

The convictions of Urciuoli and Driscoll came as part of a sweeping federal probe, still under way, into State House corruption.

At their trial, Urciuoli, the former president and chief executive of Roger Williams, was found guilty of conspiracy and 35 counts of mail fraud for hiring then-state Senator Celona to advance the hospital’s legislative agenda at the State House. Driscoll, who was a Roger Williams senior vice president, was found guilty of one count of mail fraud.

Celona, a former lawn-mower repair shop owner who became the chairman of the Senate Corporations Committee — the committee that controlled the fate of health-care legislation — was the government’s star witness at the defendants’ trial. He has pleaded guilty to selling his office to Roger Williams, the CVS drugstore chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and is serving a 2½-year federal prison term. He faces an additional 18 months in state prison after he finishes serving his federal sentence.

In 1998, Celona was hired as a consultant for an assisted-living facility and nursing home affiliated with Roger Williams. But prosecutors said he was paid by the hospital’s top officers to perform favors for the medical center and promote their political agenda. From the time of his hiring until January 2004, Celona was paid $260,638 for his work for Roger Williams. Prosecutors alleged that Celona killed certain legislation, lobbied towns to increase ambulance runs to Roger Williams, and pushed health insurers to increase reimbursements to the hospital.

Celona resigned from the General Assembly in March 2004, after the state police raided his house and carted way boxes of records and computer equipment and other senators called on him to quit.

It was Torres’ efforts to explain the boundaries of the federal mail-fraud statute to jurors that set in motion the events that led last Friday to the successful appeals of Urciuoli and Driscoll. During the trial, the defendants’ lawyers had sought to show that only clearly official legislative acts on behalf of Roger Williams — such as voting on legislation that would benefit the hospital — would amount to Celona selling his office to the hospital under the mail-fraud statute.

But Torres rejected that argument, telling the jurors that “the cloak of office” extended to all of Celona’s actions as a legislator — including his lobbying efforts on behalf of the hospital outside the halls of the State House.

While the appeals court called the mail-fraud statute archaic and murky, it concluded that Celona pressing local officials to obey state law regarding ambulance runs — his request that they abide by a Rhode Island law that allows an ambulance patient to choose the hospital they prefer, something several municipalities were ignoring at the time — did not equate to using his office to harm Rhode Island’s citizenry.

Andrew Horwitz, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, said yesterday that he views the 1st Circuit opinion “as more or less neutral” and does not believe it will prod either side into plea negotiations unless prosecutors were to offer the defendants a deal that would not require them to serve any time in prison.

After their trial, Urciuoli was sentenced by Torres to serve three years in prison and Driscoll to eight months. Both had remained free pending the outcome of their appeals to the 1st Circuit.

Asked yesterday if the appellate court’s opinion in the Roger Williams case would affect other cases it is preparing to prosecute in its Operation Dollar Bill political corruption probe, Thomas Connell, spokesman for Corrente, said: “Each case has its own unique set of facts and its own unique challenges. As for the overall investigation, we are continuing on course and will keep the circuit’s opinion in mind as we forge ahead.”

Currently, two former CVS executives — John R. “Jack” Kramer and Carlos Ortiz — are awaiting trial on conspiracy, fraud and bribery charges for hiring Celona as a $1,000-a-month consultant, allegedly in return for advancing CVS’ legislative agenda at the State House.

The two defendants are accused in a 23-count indictment of paying Celona a total of about $45,000 from early 2000 to the fall of 2003 and also lavishing him with golf outings, trips to Florida and California and tickets to professional sporting events in return for Celona using his political clout to kill controversial “pharmacy choice” legislation that would have expanded the Rhode Island network of pharmacies that accepted Blue Cross reimbursements. CVS, which dominated the restricted network, opposed the bill so strongly that the company tied Kramer’s and Ortiz’s performance reviews to defeating the legislation.

Killing the legislation, Ortiz wrote in one review, had “helped to protect millions of dollars in sales.”

The indictment alleges that Celona also opposed the licensing of Canadian pharmacies in Rhode Island, pushed legislation to allow the electronic filing of prescriptions, and promoted the creation of a state-backed loan program for pharmacy students. And it alleges that Kramer and Ortiz concealed the true nature of Celona’s relationship with CVS from other CVS executives and lobbyists, and from the public.

tbreton@projo.com