PROVIDENCE -- A city judge, a college official and an arts center president have written to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, asking that convicted former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. be imprisoned closer to home for his daughter's sake.
All three letters state that Cianci's only daughter, Nicole, is trying to overcome substance-abuse problems, and they say having Cianci in a prison closer to Rhode Island would benefit both her and her two children.
Cianci, convicted in June on a federal racketeering-conspiracy charge for running a criminal enterprise from City Hall, is scheduled to report to a federal prison in eastern Ohio on Dec. 6, although he is asking a federal appeals court to let him remain free until he exhausts his appeals.
On Monday, Providence Municipal Chief Judge Frank Caprio wrote a letter to the Bureau of Prisons director, saying Nicole Cianci "is struggling to overcome a lengthy problem with substance abuse."
"It would be a terrible tragedy if at this stage in Nicole's recovery process, she were to be so far away from her father," Caprio wrote. "This letter is not about Mr. Cianci's well-being, it is about his daughter's recovery and future. Accordingly, I respectfully suggest that you lend your assistance to have Mr. Cianci assigned to a minimum-security federal institution closer to Rhode Island."
In an interview last night, Caprio said he wrote the letter as a citizen, not in his capacity as a city judge. The letter was on his law firm's stationery.
Caprio said he talked with Cianci and Cianci's former wife about their daughter's situation and wrote the letter as a result of those discussions. "I empathize with her, as a father and grandfather," he said.
Christopher T. Del Sesto, senior vice president of Johnson & Wales University, sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons on the same day.
"Mr. Cianci has a daughter, Nicole, and two granddaughters, ages 7 and 5," Del Sesto wrote. "I knew the daughter years ago when she was a college student here at Johnson & Wales University. We tried to help her, but her substance abuse problem was too difficult for her to overcome, and she eventually withdrew from the university."
"Although Nicole now is a single mother and has two children, she is still under the influence of such substances, and is now, in fact, in a residential treatment facility," he wrote. "Mr. Cianci is the financial support for Nicole and the two girls, and is also their emotional support."
(Cianci has only one granddaughter. His other grandchild is a boy. Del Sesto could not be reached for comment on his letter last night.)
"If Mr. Cianci could be assigned to a federal facility closer to Rhode Island, it would make it much easier for his two grandchildren and their mother to visit him," Del Sesto wrote.
The letter, written on college stationery, concluded by stating: "Please note: Dr. John A. Yena, president of Johnson & Wales University, has authorized me to add his endorsement to the thoughts expressed in my letter."
Three days earlier, on Nov. 15, the president of the Providence Performing Arts Center, J.L. "Lynn" Singleton, wrote a letter to the Bureau of Prisons, seeking a "change of venue" for Cianci.
"I believe this would be fitting for humanitarian reasons for, as you may know, Mr. Cianci's only daughter is presently in an alcohol and drug rehabilitation facility, leaving in the care of immediate family his only two grandchildren," Singleton wrote.
"It would seem to me to be unusual, inappropriate and cruel punishment to isolate Mr. Cianci in a facility so far away from his family, making visits from his grandchildren extremely problematic," Singleton wrote. "I believe that the charges of which he was convicted were not the type that would require such isolation from his immediate family and friends."
Singleton, Yena, and Cianci also could not be reached last night to comment on the letters, which were obtained by The Providence Journal.
Possible alternatives to the Ohio site include four federal prisons in Pennsylvania and two in New Jersey. Fellow Plunder Dome defendants Frank E. Corrente and Richard A. Autiello were reassigned to a prison hospital in Fort Devens, Mass., because of their ages and health problems.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide in a matter of days whether Cianci will have to start serving his 64-month prison term on Dec. 6 -- or whether he will be allowed to remain free pending the outcome of his appeal of his conviction.
But Bruce M. Selya -- Rhode Island's only judge on the Boston appeals court -- won't be one of the three judges deciding the question of Cianci's bail -- or his appeal. Selya has decided that it would be best from "the perception of fairness" not to have anything to do with the Cianci case as it winds its way through the appellate process.
"I don't have any doubt I could be fair [in deciding the case]. But I felt the perception would be better from the vantage point of the court if the case was heard by a panel of judges who had no prior contact with any of the litigants," Selya said this week in an interview.
Selya says he and Cianci are not social friends and that they have no business relationship. The mayor was never a client of his, says Selya, who before becoming a judge on the 1st Circuit, was a trial judge on U.S. District Court in Providence.
But Rhode Island is a small state, Selya points out, and at one time he and the former mayor lived close to each other on Providence's East Side. Over the years, Selya says, he and the former mayor have attended many functions together. As mayor, Selya said, Cianci has presented him with keys to the city at dinners where Selya has received honorary awards.
"I have known Mayor Cianci for over 30 years and we've had periodic contact," Selya said. "We live in the same city."
According to court records in the Boston appeals court, Selya formally bowed out of the case on Sept. 30 -- a little over three weeks after Cianci was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ernest C. Torres in Providence to serve a five-year, four-month sentence for RICO conspiracy.
Prosecutors presented evidence in the Operation Plunder Dome trial that Cianci, the city's longest-serving mayor, ran a criminal enterprise out of his office in City Hall.
Unless the Boston appeals court decrees otherwise, Cianci has been ordered to surrender to start serving his sentence on Dec. 6 at the Federal Correctional Institution at Elkton, in the Appalachian region of eastern Ohio.
The prison complex -- which is divided into two parts -- is about 575 miles west of Providence and houses a total of 2,443 inmates, almost 400 more than capacity; nearly 70 percent of them are drug offenders.
Selya says that disqualifying himself from the case will have little effect on the way the appeals court handles the Cianci case because "fortunately, there are six judges on the 1st Circuit and I'm the only one from Rhode Island."
The identities of the three judges who will decide Cianci's bail motion and appeal have not been made public. If either side takes issue with the panel's decision, the full court -- minus Selya -- could review it.
Look back at a multimedia telling of the Cianci trial and its aftermath at:
http://projo.com/trial/
