Inside Castle Fumo

The daily dispatch (and expert legal commentary) from the Vince Fumo political corruption trial

"The damn dog is driving me nuts!"

By Ralph Cipriano

Vince Fumo’s son-in-law took federal jurors today on a frank tour of his life of servitude inside Castle Fumo, the state senator’s 33-room brownstone mansion on Green Street.

The son-in-law, a huge former football player, told jurors how he had to deal with a cranky and demanding boss, as well as leaky pipes and lazy plumbers. The son-in-law also spoke of touchy relations with Fumo’s angry wife, a former girlfriend and a political foe, as well as the challenges of dealing with next-door neighbors that included cloistered nuns and a barking dog that drove the senator nuts.

Christian Marrone, married to Fumo's estranged daughter, Nicole, lists on his resume five years that he spent as a special assistant to the Pennsylvania state Senate’s appropriations committee, from 1997 to 2003. But although Marrone was getting paid by taxpayers, he told the jury that during his first 18 months on the job, he spent 80 percent of his time overseeing renovations of his father-in-law’s castle on Green Street.

Fumo has been charged in a 139-count federal indictment with using state employees and contractors as servants to cater to his personal and political needs, as well as to maintain a lavish lifestyle, while systematically defrauding taxpayers of $3.5 million. The state senator, a political titan in Pennsylvania for three decades, has pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and filing false tax returns.

"The damn dog is driving me nuts," the senator wrote in an email to Christian at fumo.com. "Get this damn thing fixed ASAP," Fumo wrote in another email to his son-in-law about a drafty elevator shaft. Finding dependable contractors was another problem. The senator did not want to hire political foes.

"I’d rather not become indebted to Johnny Doc," the senator wrote in an email to Marrone. Fumo suggested that Marrone find another electrician besides the outfit that belonged to a cousin of union boss John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty. "He’s becoming a big asshole," Fumo said of the union leader.

When Fumo was breaking up with his second wife, Jane, and she was moving out of the castle, the wife wanted all construction work halted inside the Green Street mansion, Marrone told jurors. The demand did not sit well with the senator. "Fuck her and ignore her," the senator shot back in an email to Marrone.

When the wife moved out, Fumo ordered Marrone to hire a locksmith to change all the locks in the castle. And when the wife was replaced by a girlfriend, Marrone told jurors, the girlfriend complained that the wife had left behind six bags of trash. Marrone told jurors that he had to call employees of the Citizens Alliance for Better Neigborhoods, a nonprofit civic group founded by Fumo, to arrange trash pickup.

While Marrone testified to the jury, his wife, who does not speak to her father, watched Marrone from the left side of the courtroom, where she sat with her mother, Fumo’s first wife. Meanwhile, on the other side of the courtroom, trailed by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, sat Fumo’s current girlfriend, Carolyn Zinni.

Marrone told jurors that he was always worried that Fumo "would try to say things that were not true or correct." He cited as an example city records that he said erroneously listed him as president of the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, the civic group Fumo is accused of looting.

That’s why, Marrone said, for years, he stored emails from his father-in-law in a safe he kept at home. "I’m an email rat," the son-in-law told jurors without irony. The reason he kept the emails: "They were there for my protection," Marrone said.

"I knew that this day would come and I’d be sitting here, and here I am," Marrone said on the witness stand. The 6-foot-3, 270-pound Marrone is a former two-way All-City lineman for Bishop Neumann High, Class of ’93. He’s also a 2002 law school graduate of Temple University who worked from 2002 to 2004 as an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County.

Fumo had no visible reaction to his son-in-law’s story, except whatever confidences he whispered to lawyers at the defense table.

Vince’s son-in-law is a Republican who now works for the federal government as a principal assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs. And Marrone told jurors he was stunned when he was first contacted in 2004 by the head of the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office, and he learned that the feds were investigating his father-in-law.

"I was taken aback," Marrone told the jury. "I didn’t want to be involved with this. I knew that this would absolutely have an impact on us as a family." But Marrone said he talked it over with friends in the Montgomery County prosecutor’s office and eventually realized, "I really don’t have a choice."

Marrone told jurors that "virtually everything" inside Fumo’s castle was "custom-made. You couldn’t go to Home Depot and just pick something out."

Fumo’s four-story mansion, listed on sale for $7 million, has six bedrooms, ten bathrooms, four fireplaces, a Jacuzzi, an underground shooting range, a wine cellar and heated sidewalks that are supposed to automatically melt snow. But according to Marrone, the heaters didn’t always work properly, one of many problems inside the Fumo castle.

"The senator’s shower had a number of multiple heads," Marrone said, and the senator complained the heads didn’t work properly. The senator also sent out an urgent request for an elevator repairmen after he got stuck in the castle elevator a few times, Marrone said.

Fumo was demanding about quality furnishings, such as light fixtures imported from Italy, and stone countertops. "The onyx is a very expensive countertop," Marrone told jurors. "We wanted to make sure it looked nice."

When the state senator decided that he wanted a gas lantern in front of his mansion just as impressive as the gas lamps at the Academy of Music, he shot an email to his son-in-law that said, "I don’t care what it costs."

One of Marrone’s duties was overseeing contractors who installed soundproofing in the senator’s underground shooting range. "If you were shooting a gun, you didn’t want to wake the neighbors," Marrone explained to jurors.

Marrone sent a letter to group of cloistered nuns who live next door to Fumo, when Marrone was investigating a persistent leak in a tunnel under Fumo’s castle. Marrone explained he couldn't exactly ring the nuns' doorbell and strike up a conversation. The nuns lead contemplative lives and engage in perpetual worship. "Only one nun is allowed to talk," Marrone explained to jurors.

Another task assigned to the son-in-law was to hire a craftsman to create a pedestal for a statue of a flying eagle. The prosecution flashed jurors a photo of the eagle on its new pedestal. Marrone explained that he wanted to make the sure the senator, often away on legislative business in Harrisburg, approved of the work.

"Everything was done at the direction of the senator," Marrone said.

And then there was the barking dog.

"The next door neighbor’s dog persistently barked, much to the senator’s annoyance," Marrone told the jury. "He (Fumo) did not like the dog," Marrone said. "Every week, we’d deal with the barking dog."

Marrone told jurors how, on Fumo's behalf, he contacted the captain of the Ninth Police District, as well as City Councilman Jim Kenney, to complain about the dog and its owner. Marrone also made arrangements to videotape the dog to support Fumo’s complaints.

On all tasks, the instructions from the boss were always to "get it done now," Marrone told jurors. The son-in-law said he acted "with a sense of urgency" when dealing with any request from Fumo. "You’d better well be responsive; that’s what he expected."

"I always got positive feedback from him until now," Marrone told jurors. "He would always tell me I was doing a good job."

The prosecution today used lengthy questionning of Marrone to pound home their theme that the state senator used state employees such as his son-in-law as servants, when they should have been serving the taxpayers. Courtroom spectators, however, were fatigued by voluminous details. "This is like watching grass grow," one courtroom spectator cracked.

As he left the courtroom, Fumo held hands with his young girlfriend and declined comment to an Inquirer reporter. "I told you that for the last time," he told the reporter, adding that he wasn’t supposed to say anything during the trial. A few minutes later, Fumo changed his mind, and stuck his head out of the elevator to make one brief comment to the reporter.

White-collar trials (whether criminal or civil) are often like baseball: five minutes of glory for every two hours of boredom.

Today was no different at the Fumo trial this morning, as the jury slogged through each and every problem Christian Marrone faced as he managed the renovation of Fumo's 33-room mansion and dealt with Fumo’s neighbors. Marrone made call after call, keeping Fumo apprised via detailed “punch lists” and emails as plumbers missed deadlines, the elevator kept getting stuck, and one contractor failed to finish a wall that was adjoining a neighbor’s property. I’d estimate the jury saw a new email or memo every two or three minutes, all morning, all of which made essentially the same point: Marrone was in charge and it took him a lot of time.

Why? Because that whole time Marrone was on the Pennsylvania Senate payroll, as described in paragraph 52 of the indictment:

For the first 18 months of his employment by the Senate, Person No. 19 spent approximately 80% of his time on this job, coordinating and supervising the numerous construction contractors. He received no payment other than his Senate salary.

As a basic rule, the jury will likely believe the case is "about" the issues upon which the lawyers spend the most time. Trial lawyers thus always face a dilemma whenever they have a witness who knows a whole lot of details that are, on the surface, completely irrelevant (e.g., no one cares how many showers there are or who designed the custom cabinets) but which support a major theme of the case (that Fumo was using Senate-paid staffers for personal work).

Trial lawyers routinely overestimate the level of detail needed to “prove” a given fact and routinely underestimate the time it will take them to do so. As such, my personal preference is to give the jury the basic information and summary it needs, plus some supporting examples to bring the testimony to life, and then get it over with. I have never heard of any case in which the jury later complained that they just did not hear enough details about accounting irregularities or improperly stored emails or misappropriations of resources. After the first several dozen examples, they get the point, and put the burden on the other side to rebut it.

The difference here, which is why I believe the prosecution chose to spend several hours on these mundane details so early in the case (potentially costing them valuable momentum), is the relationship Marrone has to Fumo. Marrone is Fumo’s estranged son-in-law, and thus already exposed to multiple attacks on his credibility during cross-examination. As such, the prosecutors needed to bolster his credibility, which can be done through excessive detail.

Even if Dennis Cogan can score some hits here and there (maybe Marrone stretched his role in one or two of the incidents, and there’s ample evidence in the public record that Marrone hates Fumo and was the key witness in the investigation), it will be very hard to argue that Marrone’s testimony is not by and large the truth. There were simply too many details and too many emails for that. The afternoon session carried on the same as the morning, except that it moved from the house into more personal services and work on political campaigns (both of which are forbidden).

The big question then is where Cogan will go. My hunch is that, in addition to the normal attacks on credibility (which, even if not enough to rebut the core substance of his testimony, will at least divert attention away from the prosecution's case) he’ll turn the relationship around on Marrone, arguing that Marrone, who time has shown to have political ambition, volunteered to do all this work to please Fumo, who had just given him his first job out of college, and that Marrone also completed all of his Senate duties, which were minimal given his inexperience.

The relationship may then look exploitative, even when considering Marrone was “paying his dues” at the start of his career, but not like an illegal scheme to defraud the taxpayers. That would open the door to reasonable doubt, which is all the defense needs.