Making their final points before the case was handed to the jury late tomorrow afternoon, defense attorneys argued the mayor and his brother were hapless victims.
By Alex Zdan and Jenna Pizzi
TRENTON — Making their final points in U.S. v. Tony F. Mack and Ralphiel Mack before the case was handed to the jury late tomorrow afternoon, defense attorneys argued the mayor and his brother were hapless victims of schemers who used Mack’s elected office as a passkey to milk bribes from a developer who wanted to build a parking garage in downtown Trenton.
As usual, Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni was at the center the argument.
The mayor’s confidant, campaign fundraiser and self-admitted bagman never testified during the trial, but Giorgianni was the face of the parking garage deal, which was being run by the FBI as a sting.
The mayor’s attorney, Mark Davis, attempted to demolish any possibility that his client knew what Giorgianni was doing in his name, and exposed discrepancies between what Giorgianni was telling the FBI’s cooperating witnesses about the mayor’s approval and what was really going on.
“That doesn’t make any sense, ladies and gentlemen, that is ridiculous,” Davis said. “Plain and simple, ladies and gentlemen, this is JoJo acting on his own terms, doing what he wants to do. Tony is not involved in this corrupt side deal. This is the JoJo show.”
“They’re not conspirators,” he said. “They’re clashing.”
But Giorgianni’s reputation as a scheming, loan-sharking and drug-dealing felon with the highest skills as a corruption artist only reinforces the mayor’s guilt, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skahill said in the prosecution’s rebuttal at the end of the day.
“He is a criminal,” Skahill said of Giorgianni. “There’s no doubt about it. But he’s Tony Mack’s criminal.”
“Mr. Giorgianni wasn’t a creature of the FBI,” Skahill said. “He was Tony Mack’s creature. He’s who Tony Mack used throughout the case.”
The 12 people who will decide the fate of the Mack brothers were selected from the 16 empaneled jurors, but left for the day minutes after Judge Michael A. Shipp sent them back to the jury room begin deliberations. They are scheduled to return at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow to continue considering the case.
Davis’ nearly 3½-hour closing statement — matching the running time the government used for its summation Tuesday afternoon — started with references to the high school athletic career he and his client share.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been an athlete my entire life, and what I learned really early on in that experience is that you can never be too impressed, you can ever put too much stock in someone’s highlight reel,” Davis said.
“Anybody can look good in a highlight reel,” Davis added.
He criticized the government’s case and said the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“They are throwing theories at the wall and seeing which one sticks,” Davis said. “This is a criminal prosecution, not choose your own adventure.”
Giorgianni’s way around Mack was through Charles Hall III, a water meter reader on light duty who was a city official and gave Giorgianni access to the administration, Davis said.
“There’s only one person here (who) needed Charlie, and that was JoJo,” Davis said.
Referring to his client familiarly as “Tony” to the jurors, Davis paced the floor in front of the jury box. Davis drew jurors’ full attention as he sometimes indignantly went through the points that the government has said prove the mayor’s guilt.
Davis referred to a Jan. 6, 2012, meeting between Giorgianni and cooperating witness Lemuel Blackburn he said the government skipped over during the trial, “and for good reason.”
“This meeting between Lem and Giorgianni speaks volumes in light of what is discussed between JoJo and Lem at this meeting,” he said. “This is the whole case.”
In the recording, which was played in court, Giorgianni tries to cut his longtime companion, Mary Manfredo, in on the deal, which would involve selling the city-owned land for the garage for a dollar to the developers. Yet the mayor had forbidden any dollar property sales after a deal for 36 homes for $36 caused controversy the year before.
“JoJo doesn’t know that,” Davis said. “JoJo hasn’t talked to Tony about the corrupt side deal.”
“That is your proof Tony is not involved in this,” he said. “That is your reasonable doubt.”
Mack’s lack of involvement in the conspiracy is shown again almost a month later, Davis said, in a meeting at City Hall between Blackburn, Hall and then-acting housing director Carmen Melendez. At the meeting, Hall says the mayor is on board with selling the lot for a dollar, according to the video recording.
“That meeting would never happen if someone talked to Tony about selling the property for a dollar,” Davis said, pounding his hand on the lectern as he said the last five words. “So, he didn’t talk to Tony about that.”
Mayor Mack has largely stared off into space or looked down at the defense table during the course of the trial, but today he was fully focused on Davis. Davis took on April 17, 2012, where Manfredo testified she was called in to witness a cash handoff of bribe money from Giorgianni to the mayor.
Manfredo said Mack received a thick knot of folded cash, which the mayor placed in his suit pants pocket before embracing Giorgianni and leaving. That amount of cash would be visible, Davis said.
“I can’t even put my wallet in my suit pants without you seeing it,” Davis said, stepping to the left of the lectern and pointing down at the rectangular outline underneath the fabric.
Using the timestamps on the pole camera when Manfredo said the mayor was inside the steak shop, Davis produced phone records he said prove Manfredo is a liar.
“What is he doing on the phone?” asked Davis, after showing two calls received and one call made by Mack in the short window of time he was inside the steak shop.
“He is on the phone from 1:28 to 1:32 p.m.” Davis said. “That’s why Mary’s a liar. That is why the government didn’t show me the money.”
“The government saw something and they ran with it,” he said. “They put it in the highlight reel.”
In his rebuttal, Skahill explained that the phone records timestamp is not synced with the time stamp on the pole camera footage.
“It’s not a highlight reel,” Skahill said. “It’s evidence.”
Skahill attacked the defense argument that the government only brought witnesses to testify who were criminals and liars, saying they had no other choice because these were the people that the mayor had surrounded himself with during his time in office.
“We did not choose these witnesses to come in here and testify,” Skahill said. “These are who Tony Mack talked to. If you want to know what Tony Mack was doing in 2010 to 2012, these are the people that you talk to.”
Specifically, Skahill said, Giorgianni had access to Mack to the extent that if Giorgianni called the mayor at 8:30 in the morning to stop by his house, as he did on May 29, 2012, Mack would heed the call and come by. “This is his guy,” Skahill said.
“They were partners in politics, they were partners in running Trenton government and they were partners in crime,” he said.
Taking a page from the defense argument that co-conspirators Giorgianni, Manfredo and Hall were criminals and liars and not like the jurors, Skahill argued that the Mack brothers, too, were not like the jurors.
“You didn’t take bribes,” Skahill said to the jury. “You didn’t sell out your office.
“That’s what Tony Mack did,” Skahill said, turning to point to the mayor. “That’s what Ralphiel Mack did.”
Mack had been preparing for the exact instance which he now finds himself, Skahill said. He set up a structure of bagmen and buffers with Giorgianni, Ralphiel Mack and Hall to insulate him from being caught with any evidence of corruption, Skahill said.
“He was good at it,” he said. “Two layers of bagmen.”
He asked the jury to find both Mack brothers guilty.
“It’s not because the government says they’re guilty,” Skahill said. “It is because the evidence says they’re guilty.”
Skahill said Ralphiel Mack knew about the parking garage scheme and the bribe payments he was sent to the steak house to retrieve since 2011 when the project was first introduced.
In a Dec. 1, 2011, call between Giorgianni and Mack, the campaign supporter asks the mayor if he has given any consideration to that “thing with Ralphiel” then clarifies saying “parking lot.” Skahill said this is evidence that the mayor’s younger brother was not just an innocent, unknowing carrier pigeon caught with marked bills in his wallet, but a member of the conspiracy helping to further the scheme. Ralphiel Mack’s attorney, Robert Haney, had argued that the football coach got the money found in his house on the night of the FBI raids as a loan from Giorgianni to help him pay his mortgage.
“There is no evidence, not a stitch of evidence in this case that Ralphiel Mack got a loan from Mr. Giorgainni,” Skahill said.
Skahill said all that argument shows is that Mack had a motive, that he needed the money.
But Haney said the government is looking at his client unfairly through a lens of guilt, turning innocent grunts and “mmm”s into agreement and acknowledgement of a crime.
“They are innocent and so is my client,” he said.
Haney said two phone calls between Ralphiel Mack and Hall could cost his client his entire life. During the first call, which occurs just before 11 p.m, Mack asks Hall if JoJo’s Steak House is still open and Hall responds that he should go to the steak house the next day in the afternoon. The next day, Hall follows up with Mack, asking if he got a cheese steak, and Mack pauses before responding.
“The next few seconds could determine the rest of Ralph’s life because he doesn’t answer quickly enough for the government,” Haney said, reading quickly from his prepared remarks.
“Ralph Mack’s been dragged into this case because he is the brother of the mayor of the city of Trenton,” Haney said. “He’s been cruelly inserted into the sting by the government along with their allies JoJo, Manfredo and Hall.”
In a scathing closing that attacked the character of Giorgianni, Manfredo and Hall, Haney referred to the trio as a band of thieves, drug dealers, lowlifes, turkeys and grifters who exploited the FBI’s investigation for personal gain and to save themselves from drug-dealing charges.
“They gave JoJo the platform and he took it for a ride,” Haney said.
“The whole thing depended on believing JoJo,” Haney said. “JoJo. Really.”
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.
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