Both Mack and his brother filed requests last month for new trials. Ralphiel Mack also filed for an acquittal.
TRENTON — Two assistant U.S. attorneys who successfully prosecuted former Mayor Tony Mack and his brother Ralphiel say a federal judge should deny the Macks’ request for new trials.
Arguing that the law permits only narrow exceptions for guilty verdicts to be tossed aside or re-tried, federal prosecutors filed a 71-page brief saying the February conviction of Mack and his brother Ralphiel on corruption charges should stand.
Both brothers filed requests last month for new trials and an acquittal for Ralphiel Mack.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Skahill and Eric Moran wrote that the federal court rule the Macks are using to seek new trials only allows a judge to decide whether a reasonable juror could have found the defendants guilty, not whether the verdict was correct.
Case law even says that a review of a verdict “must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the government,” the brief reads, and the government attorneys say the combined wiretap recordings and testimony proved the case against the Macks during their trial on corruption earlier this year.
The former mayor used intermediaries to handle bribe money, but the recordings and testimony during trial showed the transparency of his involvement in the scheme to take money from developers.
“All of this evidence shed light on defendant Tony Mack’s disciplined plan of concealment marked by the use of code words and bagmen to hide the nature of both defendants’ criminal conduct,” the brief reads.
Mack and his brother conspired with Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni and former city employee Charles Hall III to extort cash from parking garage developers in exchange for Mack’s official action in helping them to acquire city land. The parking garage development was a creation of the FBI, and the purported developers were working for investigators.
In their filing, the prosecutors wrote about Tony Mack’s “consciousness of guilt,” which they say is revealed in the places where he discussed the parking garage project: back rooms and places such as the steak shop owned by Giorgianni. The out-of the-way places were necessary for Mack because “he wanted no evidence of his involvement in this transaction because he knew it to be corrupt,” Skahill and Moran wrote.
The former mayor’s know-ledge of his guilt was evident in his guarded and cryptic phone conversations with his protector, Giorgianni, which were captured on FBI wiretaps, Skahill and Moran wrote.
“This conduct is evident throughout the calls between defendant Tony Mack and Giorgianni and amounts to strong consciousness of guilt evidence against defendant Tony Mack.”
Ralphiel Mack was not unaware of the parking garage plan and the conspiracy involving his brother and Giorgianni, the brief says. The government attorneys point to an April 2012 phone call between Ralphiel Mack and Hall. Ralphiel Mack’s halting speech and unwillingness to speak in alleged code show consciousness of guilt on his part as well, the government attorneys argued.
“This behavior shows that defendant Ralphiel Mack, too, understood the corrupt nature of the parking garage scheme and the meeting he was planning with Giorgianni,” the brief reads.
In audio recordings that were not allowed to be played during the trial but were quoted in the brief, Giorgianni allegedly sought money from a scrap metal operator in exchange for getting a city code enforcement officer to ignore violations at the business.
The prosecutors said Giorgianni told Ralphiel Mack to “take care of the guy,” and on the audio recording Ralphiel Mack said, “I’ll handle that.”
The brief also attacks claims made by the defense attorneys, such as arguments that the case against them involved insufficient evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and a violation of constitutional rights.
Ralphiel Mack’s attorney Robert Haney argued Hall lied about a conversation he had with Ralphiel Mack hours after the FBI raided the homes of the Mack brothers and Giorgianni.
Hall, who by then was a government informant, testified during the trial that Ralphiel Mack said he hoped the cash the FBI had seized had been “washed” by Giorgianni so it did not have marked bills. Haney argued that conversation is not on the tape made from the recording device Hall was wearing at the time.
“The recording of Hall’s July 18, 2012 meeting with defendant Ralphiel Mack occurred primarily outdoors at a playing field and was mostly inaudible,” the brief says.
Mark Davis, Tony Mack’s attorney, used cell phone records to show Mack was on the phone when he was supposedly accepting a bribe inside JoJo’s Steak House in April 2012. But Skahill and Moran said Davis’ conclusion was flawed on several levels, most notably because the wiretaps show Mack had those conversations just before he arrived at the steak shop. The time stamps on the FBI-installed pole camera that Davis used to mark Mack’s movements were not syncronized with the phone company’s clocks, Skahill and Moran said.
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