PROVIDENCE -- Former Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. will spend five
years and four months at Elkton Federal Correctional Facility in eastern
Ohio, barring a decision that would keep him out on bail during appeal.
"I just got a call from my lawyer the other day," Cianci said, that
informed him where he will serve the sentence for his corruption
conviction.
Cianci, 61, was convicted in June on a single count of racketeering
conspiracy for running a criminal enterprise in City Hall. He was
sentenced last month.
Cianci said last night that lawyer Richard M. Egbert received a letter
from the Bureau of Prisons that orders Cianci to report on Dec. 6 to FCI
Elkton, a low-security federal prison northwest of Pittsburgh, near the
Pennsylvania-Ohio line.
Egbert is expected to file a motion today with the 1st U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals, Cianci said, asking that the former mayor be released
on bail during the appeal process. A federal judge in Providence has
already denied a similar request.
"The briefs are being filed for my bail pending appeal. The government
has two weeks to answer," Cianci said. "That's where my focus is."
Beyond that, "I have no comment," Cianci said.
Meanwhile, Cianci's two fellow defendants, former mayoral aide Frank
Corrente, 73, and businessman Richard Autiello, 64, have been reassigned
from a Pennsylvania federal prison to the prison hospital at Fort
Devens, Mass.
U.S. Sen. Jack Reed appealed to the Bureau of Federal Prisons after
family members raised concerns about their ages and health problems,
said Reed's spokesman, Greg McCarthy. The two men are due to report on
Friday.
Corrente has "a history of heart problems and high blood pressure," and
Autiello "has a history of health problems," Reed wrote last month. The
Bureau of Prisons obliged Reed's request.
Cianci must surrender at Elkton on Dec. 6, or else a warrant will be
issued for his arrest, said former U.S. Marshal John J. Leyden, who
recently retired.
"Most of these guys who do white-collar crimes are given a destination
through their attorney on where to report," Leyden said.
A Bureau of Prisons Web site describes Elkton as an all-male,
low-security facility, with an adjacent all-male minimum security camp.
Low-security federal prisons "have double-fenced perimeters, mostly
dormitory housing, and strong work and program components," the Web site
states. "The staff-to-inmate ratio in these institutions is higher than
in minimum-security facilities."
Darren F. Corrente, Corrente's son and a lawyer in Providence, wrote to
Reed on Sept. 16, asking the senator to recommend that his father be
placed at Devens, a federal prison in Ayer, Mass.
It is the same prison at which Joseph A. Pannone, former chairman of the
city's Tax Review Board, and another elderly Plunder Dome convict, is
serving his Plunder Dome sentence. Pannone is scheduled to be released
in 2004.
Darren Corrente said that while the last few years since Plunder Dome
began had been difficult, his father had mananged to sustain his
physical and emotional health.
"However, we are extremely worried about what is to come. It is
undeniable that five years of incarceration will be very traumatic,
particularly as he goes from his mid to late seventies," Corrente wrote.
"We are also concerned that my father may be designated to an
institution, such as a medical/administrative facility, far away from
us."
Beyond the hardship that such a distance would cause Corrente's family,
Darren Corrente wrote, "we are convinced that being unable to visit with
his family . . . will exact a tremendous and inexorable toll on him."
The family was doing everything it could to advocate for Corrente's
placement at Fort Devens, which not only is close to Rhode Island, but
to his cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, he wrote.
"We know that being there will allow each of us, including his
grandchildren, to see him more frequently. It will also be best for my
mother. It will be extremely difficult for her to travel great distances
given that she, too, is in her seventies and also has a heart condition
that will require medical attention."
Carolyn Autiello, Autiello's wife, wrote Reed a shorter letter, but one
that also spoke of her concerns for her husband's health. "We feel it is
imperative that he be placed in a facility which is close to home and
able to monitor his health," she wrote on Sept. 12.
Yesterday, Reed spokesman Greg McCarthy said the families contacted the
senator's office last month. McCarthy said Reed requested letters from
the families, then summarized their concerns in a letter he wrote to the
federal Bureau of Prisons.
Reed was moved in part, McCarthy said, by the "roller coaster" of the
final months of an ailing Rosemary Glancy, the former deputy tax
assessor who in August 2000, had just begun serving a 33-month sentence
in a Connecticut prison when she was hospitalized with a terminal
illness.
Her transfer by Med-Evac flight from a community hospital in Connecticut
to a prison hospital for women in Fort Worth, Texas, 1,500 miles from
home, and then to a Fort Worth community hospital, led to a public
outcry for her release. U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, and Reed
intervened on her behalf by writing to the Bureau of Prisons.
Glancy was so ill that federal prison officials and U.S. Attorney
Margaret E. Curran supported the family's plea for a compassionate
release. Glancy was flown back to Rhode Island in October 2000, and
lived for another three months, mostly in hospitals, before she died.
"There was a sensitivity to what Rosemary Glancy went through in trying
to convey the families' concerns about the convicted members of their
families," McCarthy said.
