Federals prosecutors won the jury and therefore the conviction of Vince Fumo but Fumo and Friends apparently won the judge.

After a five-month-long trial that ended in the jury returning a guilty verdict on 137 corruption counts, a federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Fumo to 55 months in federal prison and restitution and fines of $2.4 million before a courtroom packed with more than 250 Fumo friends and supporters.

That sentence is far lower than the more than 20 year-imprisonment sought by federal prosecutors and the 15 years recommended in a sentencing evaluation independent of the U.S. attorney’s office. The lighter-than-expected sentence was largely the result of one final political tactic by Fumo and his lawyers. They orchestrated a positive letter-writing campaign from 250 influential supporters that apparently had success with Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter. Among the letters were those from Gov. Rendell, Comcast executive David L. Cohen and U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, D-Phila. The judge acknowledged he was influenced by the outpouring for the former South Philadelphia state senator and statewide political powerhouse. By contrast, he said, he only got six letters from the public recommending a stiffer sentence.

Vince Fumo

But Assistant U.S. Attorney John Pease characterized those testimonials as support from “cronies and enablers” of Fumo, who overlooked his corruption out of fear of reprisal or in order to benefit from his power or influence in the Legislature and elsewhere. He said Fumo’s “good deeds” were all financed by taxpayers in one way or another rather than out of any of his substantial personal assets.

Pease and fellow prosecutor, Robert Zauzmer argued during Fumo’s trial that he abused $4 million from the state Senate, the non-profit Citizens Alliance and the Independent Seaport Museum on whose board he sat. Fumo used state staff and resources for personal and political purposes, even hiring a private eye to spy on his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend and having a staffer clean his house. He took tools and vehicles from Citizen’s Alliance for use in his many homes, including a farm in Halifax outside Harrisburg.

Pease revealed that federal authorities could not charge Fumo with extortion for his attempts to get $50 million for Citizen’s Alliance from the communications giant Verizon because Fumo and his staff successfully erased all incriminating e-mails that could have led to that harsher conviction. Fumo’s attempts at cover-up, though, led to a number of obstruction of justice charges.

Pease described Fumo’s crimes were needless because he is wealthy in his own right and “had not need to steal. But he stole because he could. Because he was drunk with power.” Even defense lawyers concede that Fumo has a net worth of $9 million. Fumo’s wealth derives from a family bank, a $1-million-a-year arrangement with a Philadelphia law firm and real estate investments.

As Pease argued with the judge for a stiffer sentence, he received gentle and sometimes forceful pushback from the Lancaster County jurist. Listening to Pease’s tone in an audio of the court proceedings, you can hear his frustration at losing his argument with the judge. He used the word “outrageous” about the actions of Fumo and his allies so many times that the judge rebuked him for hyperbole.

“How do you know what the public thinks?” Judge B said, to an assertion by Pease that 11 million Pennsylvanians were “paying attention to what is happening here.” The judge observed that many in his native Lancaster County where he once served as district attorney and a county judge “never heard of Mr. Fumo. Please, it affects my otherwise mild-mannered demeanor when you indulge in hyperbole.”

Unlike his testimony during his trial in which he came off as defiant, a sorrowful Fumo took the stand Tuesday and made a soft-spoken appeal for mercy prior to his sentencing.

“I did not view my job as just ordinary. I was a political entrepreneur. I got power so I could use that power in a good way,” Fumo told Judge Buckwalter just prior to his sentencing. “I was addicted to my work. I got things done and I’m proud of that. I couldn’t have gotten the things I got if I was meek and a bureaucrat.”

He said he never intended to steal from either the taxpayers or the non-profit Citizens Alliance that he formed and funded with state grants and a $17 million settlement from PECO Electric. “It was the last thing on my mind,” he explained “I made some errors in judgments – such as the tools (taken) from Citizens Alliance.”

After an afternoon of point and counter-point on Fumo and his actions, Judge Buckwalter finally rendered his decision in a long half-hour speech that came after 5 p.m. and said he would depart from sentencing guidelines in Fumo’s favor.

“I’m a human being and I’m moved very much by the appearance of families and conditions they find themselves in, but (judges) have to set aside their emotions,” the judge said.

He praised and then chastised the Philadelphia Inquirer saying its initial investigation that attracted the interest of federal prosecutors was in the best interest of public watchdogs but much of its later reporting was “mean spirited.”

(The Inquirer struck back with a scathing editorial it posted online at Philly.com within minutes of Buckwalter’s decision deriding the sentence as far too light and calling those who wrote letters in Fumo’s behalf “his apologists. . . The losers at this case’s conclusion remain the taxpayers.”)

He chastised voters for returning Fumo to office term and after term for 30 years despite published reports and assessments that he often worked outside the lines of the law. The judge said the voters in Fumo’s South Philadelphia and Center City-based district seemed to adhere to the adage: “He may be a crook. But he’s our crook.”

In sentencing Fumo, he said, of the felonies of which he was convicted: “It’s not murder. It’s not robbery. It’s not the selling of a political office.”

Response to the sentence was quick and often broke along Fumo fault lines. Former U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan, who oversaw the five-year federal investigation until he resigned last year before the trial’s start, said in a prepared statement posted on his political website:

“While I am deeply disappointed in the length of former Senator Vince Fumo’s sentence, we cannot forget that justice was realized and Vince Fumo was soundly convicted for a pattern of criminal behavior. He has been removed from the Legislature and is now going to jail. This is a remarkable event that no one thought would happen.”

Meehan said it was an injustice that Fumo’s sentence was far less than other public officials who committed lesser crimes. “We are sending the wrong message to those in power that if you abuse the public trust, don’t worry because the punishment will be weak,” Meehan said.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, a Democrat, pointed to the discrepancy of the sentence to other public officials found guilty of corruption but told the Philadelphia Inquirer: Nevertheless, a simple, yet important, message was reinforced today - those who abuse the trust of the public, especially elected officials, will be caught and punished."

“He was a public person who did some wrong things, but he also did some very positive things for his community," state Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Phila., told the newspaper.

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State Budget Impasse
The Insider looks at the two sides and finds that state budget is between a rock and a hard place

We’ve all heard the expression between a rock and a hard place. Going to the Internet we find its meaning is “difficulty, faced with a choice between two unsatisfactory options.”

Its origin appears to trace back to 1917 and a dispute between mineworkers and copper mining companies in Bisbee, Arizona. The workers, some of whom had organized into labor groups, approached the company management with a set of demands for better pay and working conditions. The demands were refused and subsequently many workers at the Bisbee mine were forcibly departed to New Mexico.

The phrase seems to stem from the two unsatisfactory choices the mineworkers confronted between harsh and underpaid work at the rock-face of the mines and unemployment and poverty on the other hand.

That leads us to a profile of the two “sides” in the current budget battle.