In the summer of 1997, with his family's lawnmower business on the rocks, John A. Celona asked Robert A. Urciuoli, the president of Roger Williams Medical Center, for a job.

So began a long and tangled relationship that led, yesterday, to a federal courtroom and opening statements in a criminal trial in which Urciuoli and two others are accused of stealing the honest services of Celona, a longtime state senator from North Providence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Luis Matos told the jury that Urciuoli, former hospital vice president Frances P. Driscoll and ex-business associate Peter J. Sangermano conspired to hire Celona to use his political position to the hospital's secret advantage -- promoting and opposing legislation, lobbying towns to increase ambulance runs to Roger Williams, and pressuring health insurers with business before his powerful Senate committee to raise their reimbursement rates to the hospital.

Lawyers for the defense countered that Celona was hired to promote the hospital and its affiliates to his extensive network of senior citizens -- a job that was fully disclosed -- and that any political dealings he had with the hospital were above board.

The man in the middle -- Celona -- has pleaded guilty to selling his office to Roger Williams, as well as the CVS drugstore chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island. (Lawyers for those companies, which remain under federal investigation, watched yesterday's opening.)

As part of his agreement to cooperate in the ongoing State House influence-peddling probe, Celona is expected to take the stand late today or, more likely, tomorrow morning.

"This is a case about the buyers of that corrupt politician," said Matos in his opening statement. "A corrupt politician doesn't act on his own. He needs someone to pay him and tell him what matters to work on. And he needs someone to help him hide his actions."

Matos said that Celona's testimony, bolstered by notes and e-mails between Celona and Urciuoli and Driscoll as well as the testimony of others, will prove the defendants' guilt.

Urciuoli, said Matos, was "the deal maker" -- the one "who bought, and agreed to buy, John Celona's corrupt services."

Driscoll, the hospital's vice president for public relations and marketing, was Celona's "handler" -- the one who carried out Urciuoli's instructions to put Celona on the payroll and who "made sure that John Celona earned his pay by benefiting the political interests of Roger Williams Medical Center," charged Matos.

And Sangermano, a partner with Roger Williams in its assisted-living center, The Village at Elmhurst, was the "enabler," agreeing to have Celona placed on the center's payroll and paid by Roger Williams, even though his true duties lay elsewhere.

Richard M. Egbert, one of Urciuoli's lawyers, argued that it would be an "absurdity" to believe that the defendants conspired to hire a back-bench senator who was on the outs with the Senate's leadership in the late 1990s, and that Celona did legitimate work promoting health care among the elderly.

"John Celona in 1997 was no one," Egbert told the jurors. "He was without influence, power or authority. He could open no doors. . . . He was so powerless that they threw him out of his [Senate] office."

What really happened, Egbert argued, was that Celona went to Urciuoli and "gave him a sob story" about how he couldn't find a job and couldn't provide for his wife and two children, and that he was well acquainted with seniors and would work hard. And Urciuoli, who was familiar with Celona's work among the elderly, agreed.

"And for that good deed [Urciuoli] finds himself here today . . . for helping another human being," said Egbert. "Unfortunately, that human being is John Celona, a cheat and a thief who got caught.

"John Celona is going to get on the stand and tell you some whoppers."

Kevin J. Bristow, Driscoll's lawyer, told the jury that his client is a 67-year-old woman who has devoted her life to education and working for nonprofits -- "an extremely honest and ethical person who has never committed a crime."

And John Pappalardo, one of Sangermano's lawyers, spoke of his client as a self-made man who launched his own home-building business out of high school and became a successful developer of assisted-living centers.

Sangermano was "strongly opposed" to hiring Celona, said Pappalardo, and did so only after Roger Williams agreed to pay his salary and obtain clearance from the Rhode Island Ethics Commission that it would be proper.

In his six years as a consultant, from 1998 to 2004, Celona saw his weekly pay rise from $700 to $892 to $1,000, said Matos, earning a total of $260,638.

THE OPENING STATEMENTS, prefaced by instructions to the jury from Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, consumed the morning and the first part of the afternoon in a trial expected to last about five weeks.

The last two-plus hours were spent on the first witness, former Roger Williams executive Maureen A. McNamara, who testified that she had spoken to Driscoll and questioned Celona's hiring.

"I just didn't feel that he brought anything of value to the hospital," testified McNamara, who left at the end of 1998 as vice president and chief operating officer over unexplained differences with Urciuoli.

Driscoll told her that Celona would be working with the elderly and also helping the hospital increase its ambulance runs from local communities. Urciuoli, testified McNamara, was concerned that Roger Williams "wasn't getting its fair share" of noncritical rescue runs in which a patient can choose which hospital to go to.

Matos, in his opening statement, said that Urciuoli had told the hospital's head of emergency medicine that he was going to seek "a political solution" to the problem -- and that the solution was to enlist Celona to talk to public officials in North Providence and East Providence.

As part of those efforts, Celona met with North Providence Mayor A. Ralph Mollis.

Mollis, listed as a potential defense witness, told The Journal last week that he received a letter from Celona, but never met or spoke with him about the matter.

But yesterday, asked about Matos' opening statement, Mollis said that he checked his records and they indicate that he did meet with Celona in December 1998. Mollis, a candidate in today's Democratic primary for secretary of state, said that he did nothing to assist Celona or Roger Williams.

One issue that the lawyers explored yesterday was Urciuoli's and Driscoll's alleged instructions to Celona in 1999 to oppose a bill creating a statewide cancer council to promote cancer research. The prosecution argues that Roger Williams opposed the bill to protect its own turf regarding cancer treatment, while the defense countered that no Rhode Island hospital supported it because it would have hurt existing cancer research and treatment.

Matos, in his opening statement, said pettiness also contributed to Roger Williams' objections -- Urciuoli and Driscoll disliked the former Roger Williams doctor, Paul Calabresi, who would have headed the council.

But under cross-examination, McNamara said that Urciuoli had fired Calabresi because he suspected the doctor of misappropriating federal grant money intended for Roger Williams and diverting it to a Connecticut company controlled by Calabresi.

There have never been any public disclosures of any alleged misappropriation by Calabresi, and no further details were offered yesterday. Calabresi, an internationally recognized cancer researcher, died of cancer in 2003.

McNamara's testimony was punctuated by frequent objections from both the defense and the prosecution, prompting Torres at the end of the day to call the start of the trial "ragged" and urge the lawyers to do a better job of "staying on track" when testimony continues today.

Today's scheduled witnesses are Sheila Capobianco, who was Urciuoli's secretary; Katherine D'Arezzo, a lawyer for the state Ethics Commission; Lisa Hawthorne, who worked in marketing for The Village at Elmhurst; and Dr. Terry Patinkin, the former chief of emergency medicine at Roger Williams.

After that, the next witness on the government's list is Celona.

mstanton@projo.com / (401) 277-7724