Jonathan F. Oster, left, former town administrator in Lincoln, will be sentenced on May 8. Journal File / Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — Eight years ago, Robert R. Picerno’s fundraising zeal helped propel Jonathan F. Oster into the Lincoln town administrator’s office. After yesterday, it may wind up putting him in jail.

That’s because a Superior Court jury, after listening to a case that relied heavily on tapes of Picerno’s conversations with bribery targets and with Oster, found the former state senator guilty of two counts of bribery and two counts of extortion for actions he took while town administrator from 2000-2002.

The state charged, and the jury agreed, that Oster was engaged in two conspiracies with Picerno in 2001 to sell a piece of town-controlled land, the H&H Screw property on Route 116, for $105,000 — less than the $600,000-plus that was owed in back taxes on the property. Picerno — who brought in nearly a quarter of the $43,284 Oster raised for his 2000 town administrator run — was supposed to find the targets and collect the payoff money, the state said. Oster’s role was to get Town Council approval of the sale.

The announcement of yesterday’s verdict came around 12:30 p.m., after about a day and a half of deliberations.

As he had throughout the almost four-week trial, Oster sat straight-backed and stoic as the verdicts were read, his head only shaking slightly as the first guilty verdict was announced. His wife’s eyes were red and moist as the jury filed out of the room, and the group of friends who had been in court nearly every day embraced and whispered to each other.

Associate Justice Gilbert V. Indeglia set Oster’s sentencing for May 8. The former two-term senator and one-term town administrator faces up to 20 years in prison on each bribery count and 10 years on each conspiracy count.

For his part in the conspiracy, Picerno pleaded no contest in 2004 to four counts of bribery and three counts of conspiracy to solicit bribes. He was sentenced to eight years, with three to serve in jail.

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said Oster’s actions in office “perpetuated the unfortunate stereotype that public corruption is alive and well in Rhode Island” and that he ought to serve “significant time in state prison for his crimes.”

“The citizens of Lincoln, like citizens throughout Rhode Island, expect and deserve faithful, true, and honest service from their public officials,” said Lynch. “What they got from Oster, however, was pure greed and corruption — conduct so glaring and objectionable that a jury unanimously found it to be criminal.”

Current Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond said the verdict closed “an unfortunate chapter in the town of Lincoln’s proud history.”

Oster’s lawyer, C. Leonard O’Brien said Oster would appeal. The defense had objected throughout the trial to Associate Justice Gilbert V. Indeglia’s decisions to allow the state to present evidence of so-called bad acts by other persons, even if Oster wasn’t present when the acts occurred or even knew of them.

“Jon has options,” O’Brien said, “and one of the most important is to appeal this ruling.”

Assistant Attorney General Bethany Macktaz said those other events, such as Picerno’s shakedown of a contractor at a playground project and the town’s efforts to settle a frivolous lawsuit Picerno’s wife filed contesting the couple’s property taxes, provided important context for understanding the criminal aspects of Oster’s administration, particularly when Picerno was involved.

She said conspiracy cases, which are based on inferences and deductions from evidence, are always difficult, and pressing one six years after the events made it even harder. She said the enormous amounts of evidence, tapes, interviews and grand jury transcripts presented a dual challenge: mastering the material and then deciding what not to use.

“It was ‘It’s H&H, stupid,’  ” she said of the mantra she and Assistant Attorney General William Ferland adopted as they tried to come up with a coherent package of exhibits and testimony that would prove the state’s case without overwhelming the jury with details.

The Oster prosecution began in 2001 under then-Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse and was the first one to use the state’s wiretapping law. That distinction became a little dubious last year, when many of the tapes were thrown out by the Supreme Court, which ruled the state hadn’t followed the law in storing the tapes.

But what was left was enough. Picerno did not appear in court, lawyers for both sides would only say he was “legally unavailable,” but at times his voice literally filled the room as the state played the tapes of his conversations.

There were chatty, gossipy phone calls between him and Oster. There were coffee klatches at Shanna’s Country Kitchen and Stuffies’ where Picerno would negotiate for and arrange the payoffs.

At one of those meetings, with Robert Gelfuso, one of the bribe targets who was wearing a state police microphone, Gelfuso pressed Picerno for assurances that Oster was on board with the bribe. Picerno twice boasted: “He will never [expletive] me.”

There was also devastating audio and video tapes of a Feb. 16, 2002, meeting inside and then outside Oster’s Old Louisquisset Pike private law office between Oster and Picerno, when Picerno put an envelope with $10,000 cash in Oster’s office mailbox and said “All right, that’s from Wayne, for that H&H [expletive].”

Wayne was David Wayne Daniel, Gelfuso’s partner. Later that day, state police found the envelope and the $10,000 when they searched Oster’s office.

It was ironic that Oster was brought down by taped conversations. On his first days in office in January 2001, he had Town Hall swept for listening devices. And on Feb. 16, 2002, he made Picerno go outside to talk after he told Picerno — who was wearing a state police microphone — that the police may have bugged his office.

Macktaz said that was a key point. Why, if Oster thought Picerno was talking about a legal deal, did he fear the meeting being taped, she said. And by moving the meeting outside, Oster unwittingly put himself right in line with a state police video camera.

“That was the key, that was the crux of it,” she said. “And for him to walk out into the camera was extremely fortunate for us.”

jhill@projo.com