By Ralph Cipriano
His voice rising in indigation toward the end of a six-hour closing statement, defense lawyer Dennis Cogan accused federal prosecutors of committing a courtroom crime by robbing Vince Fumo of his humanity.
"They have demonized this guy," Cogan shouted to the jury. The specific subject matter Cogan was talking about was counts 104 through 108 of the 137-count federal indictment against Fumo. The four counts alleged that Fumo had defrauded the Independence Seaport Museum by helping himself to a dozen free yacht trips worth more than $100,000.
Cogan displayed a letter from John Carter, former president of the Seaport Alliance Museum, offering the former state senator use of a museum yacht "if you'd like to host something."
"I think you will like the boat," Carter wrote Fumo.
"He's doing it with Carter's blessing," Cogan told the jury. "There's complete transparency." Yet because the government is out to get Vince Fumo, Cogan argued, they turn a bunch of authorized yacht trips into a crime, and charge that Fumo went out to sea to defraud the museum.
After Fumo's nautical adventures were recounted in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the museum's board of directors approved a resolution saying that the purpose of giving freebies to VIPs like Fumo was "raising the profile of the museum with the general public."
Why did the Seaport Alliance Museum want Fumo on one of their yachts, Cogan asked the jury. He pointed a finger at his pale client with the gray hair, sitting in silence at the defense table.
"There once was Vince Fumo," Cogan said, his voice rising again. "There once was somebody who was important."
Cogan told the jury that thanks to the government, that Vince Fumo no longer exists. Instead, the former state senator has been replaced by "somebody who has been brought low."
Cogan talked about the "unrelenting onslaught from the government," that has been investigating Fumo since 2004. Cogan said he wondered how Fumo was able to get up every morning.
In summation, Cogan urged the jury to "cast aside the obvious demonizing of a human being" and acquit his client.
The defense lawyer then quoted a speech given by Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. In the speech, More, Lord Chancellor of England, is asked to arrest a man accused of being a traitor, as well as a devil. This was back in an era when heretics were burned at the stake.
More, Cogan told the jury, refuses to arrest the man, and then he explains why.
"This nation is planted thick with laws," Cogan quoted More. "And if you cut them all down, and the devil turns around on you, where will you hide?"
"I would even give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake," Cogan said, concluding the speech.
The defense lawyer reminded jurors how in his opening statement twenty weeks ago, he had asked them to acquit his client, and "give him back his life."
"It's too late for that," Cogan told the jurors. "Give him back what's left of it."
At the defense table, Fumo's co-defendant, Ruth Arnao, had tears in her eyes. So did several Fumo supporters in the courtroom. Fumo came over to the defense lawyer and gave him a hug.
Next, it was Prosecutor Bob Zauzmer's turn to rebut the closing statements of Cogan, on behalf of Fumo, and Eddie Jacobs, on behalf of Ruth Arnao.
Zauzmer told the jury by his own estimation, his own closing statement that stretched across three days had taken 10 and a half hours, while Jacobs had spoken for seven hours, and Cogan, six.
After a total of 23 and a half hours of closing statements, the prosecutor told jurors, they probably had enough.
Well, the still-feisty prosecutor declared, "I haven't had enough." Zauzmer then ripped into those defense closing statements, characterizing them as "one misstatement after another."
Zauzmer rebutted Cogan's charge that he had demonized Fumo. "Demonize him?" Zauzmer said. "He's had every protection." Zauzmer said that Fumo had his defense lawyers looking out for him, as well as the judge.
And then the prosecutor told the jurors to remember that "Fumo and Arnao were doing everything they could to destroy the evidence" in this case. Zauzmer also asked jurors if prosecutors were demonizing Fumo when they pointed out how a state Senate staffer from Pennsylvania had to go to Florida and stand on the roof of Fumo's vacation home to install a weather channel.
"That's what this case was about," the prosecutor told jurors, not demonizing the guy who had state senate staffers waiting on him hand and foot.
Zauzmer reminded the jurors about how Fumo had padded his payroll with staffers like driver Dave Nelson, who didn't have much to do the seven months of the year when he wasn't driving Fumo around. Or Lou Leonetti, another Fumo driver who also had a lot of down time, Zauzmer said. When he wasn't driving the senator around, Zauzmer told the jury, Leonetti would fill up his time by doing errands such as running out "to buy a can of hairspray."
The prosecutor talked about how Fumo "grossly overpaid" his staffers to maintain their loyalty, so they would continue to do personal and political favors on his behalf. The prosecutor also talked about how Ruth Arnao made $80,000 as a Fumo staffer, and how defense lawyer Jacobs had defended her by saying it only amounted to a raise of about 10 percent a year.
"When this trial is over, tell me where to sign up," Zauzmer told the jury.
This case was not about demonizing Fumo, Zauzmer said, it was about holding the senator accountable for all those "personal servants in the basement at Tasker Street." That's where Fumo's district office was located, and, the government has alleged, Fumo staffers filled their working hours by running political campaigns and doing personal errands for the boss.
"That's what this case is about," Zauzmer reminded jurors. "That's why we're here."
It's not demonizing Fumo, Zauzmer said, "to say follow the law." The prosecutor reminded jurors of what Governor Rendell, a defense witness, had said on the witness stand. That public servants have to follow the law, and that there are no exceptions for exceptionally hard workers.
Zauzmer brought up defense lawyer Cogan's contention that Fumo wasn't accused of taking any bribes. "That's like a bank robber saying, but I didn't shoot anybody."
The prosecutor also brought up defense lawyer Jacobs's accusation that prosecutors like himself were filled with "venom and vitriol" for Fumo. Zauzmer joked that prosecutors would "get up in the morning with venom in their veins" and then they plan "what evidence to manufacture today."
Zauzmer also accused Jacobs of using "voodoo accounting" to explain away the defendants' purchase of luxury vehicles like a $55,000 Lincoln Navigator.
"That's what this case is all about," Zauzmer told jurors. "It's all about the greed."
Zauzmer then took jurors back 20 weeks to Prosecutor John Pease's opening statement of what the case was about. "It's about greed, power, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement."
The prosecutor recalled Fumo on the witness stand telling jurors that his only obligation as a state senator was to go to Harrisburg and vote.
There was more to it than that, the prosecutor told the jury. "He had an obligation to follow the law," Zauzmer said. Fumo also had an obligation not to enrich himself with OPM -- other people's money.
The defendants, the prosecutor concluded, "completely lost sight of the border line between right and wrong."
"We await your verdict," the prosecutor told the jurors, who are scheduled to begin deliberating tomorrow at 10 a.m.
