Former TOB Supervisor Venditto cleared of all corruption charges

Jury ‘deadlocked’ on verdict for Ed, Linda Mangano

By Laura Lane and Erik Hawkins

Former Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto was found not guilty of all corruption-related charges against him on Thursday, according to numerous published reports, after a jury deliberated for five days.

The jury remained deadlocked, according to court officials, on the charges against former Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and his wife, Linda.“I think the jury has spoken, and they came out with the proper verdict,” said Mike Rich, 69, a lifelong Oyster Bay resident. “We try cases in court, not public opinion. I think coverage by [some media] was slanted, especially when they repeated the charges every day. I’m very proud of my town.”

Mangano and Venditto were both facing multiple charges of bribery and corruption, and restaurateur Harendra Singh, who has pleaded guilty to bribing the former officials in exchange for help for his struggling businesses, was the government’s key witness.

John Venditto Verdict and Closing statements by Aggie Whelan Kenny

Marc Agnifilo closing statements: Atty Marc Agnifilo addressing jury,  Back of Atty Michael Keating, John Venditto, Linda Mangano, Edward Mangano

John Venditto’s defense

Marc Agnifilo, Venditto’s attorney, attacked Singh’s character. “Harendra Singh is selfish, remarkably self-important, and has grand plans … .” he said. “He’s not happy with where he is. He needs more. He needs to be more — to be somewhere else.”

He portrayed Venditto as “self-contained and happy” — already having all he could want or need. He said even Singh complimented Venditto at one point, calling him “a humble man.”

Agnifilo went on to say, “Singh uses love and closeness to get what he wants, and then he tells us it’s all a lie.”

Agnifilo said Venditto saw Singh as good for Oyster Bay back in 2010. The restaurateur had been a town concessionaire for 10 years, and had made capital improvements to the town buildings that he leased with his own money.

Agnifilo said Venditto didn’t know that Singh was in a corrupt relationship with former deputy town attorney Frederick Mei, who also testified last month in the trial as per a cooperation agreement. Agnifilo said Mei admitted under oath that he forged a document to make it look as though Venditto had signed a loan agreement on Singh’s behalf. Mei also admitted to forging a lease to get an earlier loan for Singh from Habib Bank, without Venditto’s knowledge.

Agnifilo likened Mei and Singh to Bonny and Clyde. “They found each other to commit crimes,” he said.

John Venditto not guilty verdict:  Jury foreman reading not guilty verdicts, court deputy right, Judge Joan Azrack, foreground l-r US attorneys, Lara Treinis Gatz, RaymondTierney,Middle ground l-r, Atty Marc Agnifilo, John Venditto, Edward Mangano, Linda Mangano

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http://liherald.com/stories/former-tob-supervisor-venditto-cleared-of-all-corruption-charges,103525

NY POST: Star witness in Ex-Cuomo aide trial: I’m in a ‘boatload of trouble’

Star witness in Ex-Cuomo aide trial: I’m in a ‘boatload of trouble’

By Priscilla DeGregory and Bruce Golding

The prosecution’s star witness against a former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted on the stand Tuesday that he himself is “in a boatload of trouble” following his arrest last week.
Ex-lobbyist Todd Howe returned to the witness stand in Manhattan federal court for the first time since he got locked up Thursday night — and was immediately questioned by a defense lawyer about getting nabbed in his hotel room by the feds.
Howe told jurors he spent the weekend in jail and woke up there Tuesday morning, but that it was “uncertain” how long he’d have to remain behind bars.

When asked why he got busted, Howe ( pictured on statnd)  said: “It was my understanding that the government thought I might have ​broken my bail agreement.”

Under cross-examination by defense lawyer Daniel Gitner (pictured) — whose previous questioning led to his incarceration — Howe also tried to walk back his admission that he lied to his credit-card company to avoid paying for a $600 stay at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Howe racked up the bill while visiting New York City in 2016 to meet with the feds and hammer out his cooperation deal.

“I didn’t remember in October where I​ had stayed and what I had done​, and I was disputing​. I wasn’t denying it,” he said.
Artwork by Aggie Whelan Kenny

“I had dozens of hotels​ and whatever​….I wasn’t denying that I stayed there, I was just disputing it because I wasn’t certain as to at that point, five months later, if I had or I hadn’t. I just didn’t recall.”
Gitner then asked Howe — who got special permission from the judge to trade his jail garb for a black suit, white shirt and light blue, patterned tie — “Do you agree with me today that you’re in more trouble ​today ​than you have​ ever​ been in your ​entire ​life?”
“​I believe ​I’m in a boatload of trouble, all together,” Howe answered.
During his two previous days of cross-examination, Howe was grilled about his admitted decades of lying, cheating and stealing, and he testified Tuesday that he repeatedly assured prosecutors he was a “changed” man.
“Every time I walked in the door, I was representing myself as being honest and truthful,” he said.
Howe claims to have helped execs at two companies doing business with the state funnel more than $300,000 in bribes to then-Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco.

BLOOMBERG: Soon-to-Be-Deported Activist Wins ‘Freedom to Say Goodbye’

Soon-to-Be-Deported Activist Wins ‘Freedom to Say Goodbye’

By 

Bob Van Voris

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-29/soon-to-be-deported-activist-wins-his-freedom-to-say-goodbye

NYU Law Student, Brittany Castle from the  Sanctuary Coalition argues the case for Ravi Ragbir  before Federal Judge Katherine Forest

A Manhattan federal judge didn’t mince words in slamming the Trump administration’s handling of an immigration activist’s arrest for deportation as resembling the actions of "regimes we revile as unjust."

 "We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it," U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest wrote in an opinion Monday in releasing Ravi Ragbir so he can get his affairs in order and say goodbye to his family before being deported to Trinidad & Tobago.

Judge Katherine Forrest speaking from bench, far left.
Courtroom art by Aggie Whelan Kenny 

Ragbir, who is subject to a 2006 order of deportation based on a felony wire fraud conviction, originally came to the U.S. on a visa in 1991 and is married to a U.S. citizen. Forrest, who was appointed to the bench in 2011 by President Barack Obama, said the government was "unnecessarily cruel" in arresting him at a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, then putting him on a plane to a jail cell in Miami.

"There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye," Forrest said. "That is, the freedom to hug one’s spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs that collect over time. It ought not to be -- and it never has before been -- that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home and work."

Judge Forrest's order

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/ruling-regarding-ravidath-lawrence-ragbir/2732/

BLOOMBERG: Peruvian Acquitted in Soccer Bribery Trial in U.S.

Peruvian Acquitted in Soccer Bribery Trial in U.S.

 By Christie Smythe

• Jury’s not guilty finding follows conviction of Napout, Marin
• Manuel Burga says he plans to return home to wife and children

A former Peruvian soccer official was acquitted of U.S. charges that he accepted bribes from sports-marketing companies for media rights to professional tournaments.
The acquittal amounts to a mixed verdict for the U.S. government, which won convictions against the former heads of Brazil’s soccer federation and South American soccer on Friday.
A jury in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday came back with a not guilty verdict on a single count of racketeering conspiracy for Manuel Burga, 60. The jurors were undecided about Burga last week, when they delivered the guilty verdicts against the other officials.
Burga choked back sobs, covering his mouth, as the verdict was read.

L-R  Former president of Peru’s soccer federation, Manuel Burga, US Atty Keith Edelman, Burga’s Atty, Bruce Udolf  Courtroom Art by Aggie Whelan Kenny

“My heart is bumping,” Burga in a hallway afterward. “I’m scared how it’s bumping.”
Burga was charged alongside Juan Angel Napout, 59, a Paraguayan who was president of CONMEBOL, South American soccer’s governing body, and Jose Maria Marin, 85, the former head of Brazil’s soccer federation, as part of a sprawling U.S. probe alleging that international soccer officials and sports marketing executives conspired for decades in bribery schemes.
The U.S. verdict came in the first case to go to trial in a corruption crackdown that began with a predawn raid at a luxury hotel in Zurich in 2015. Burga’s acquittal and Napout and Marin’s convictions follow guilty pleas from 24 people tied to FIFA, international soccer’s governing association. Fifteen others who’ve been charged are fighting extradition to the U.S.
"There’s no question in my mind that it was the right call by the jury," Bruce Udolf, Burga’s lawyer, said in an interview after the verdict. "I’m very happy for him because he’s a good man and he’s been through hell for the last two years."

John Jay College Lloyd Sealy Library Exhibit- Rogues Gallery:40 Years of Court Art

ROGUES GALLERY: Forty Year Retrospective of Courtroom Art from Son of Sam to El Chapo

Curated by Larry E. Sullivan (Chief Librarian), Aggie Whelan Kenny, and Elizabeth Williams

On view November 30, 2017 to February 2, 2018

Rogue’s Gallery – 1977 – 2017 – 40 Year Retrospective of Courtroom Art from Son of Sam to El Chapo showcases the work of three award winning and nationally known illustrators: Aggie Kenny, Richard Tomlinson and Elizabeth Williams. Through their art, viewers will learn about the wide and varied actions of the United States legal system. The images (most never exhibited before) show various New York courts and cases.

Artist Richard Tomlinson bequeathed his entire body of work to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Lloyd Sealy Library. Subsequently the Library’s courtroom art collection grew to include works by Aggie Whelan Kenny and Elizabeth Williams. This exhibition marks the fortieth anniversary of the Son of Sam case and the thirtieth anniversary of the Bernhard Goetz subway shootings. The John Jay exhibit allows observers to step into New York’s colorful historical trials and cases.

Link to buy the catalog 
 http://www.lulu.com/shop/anya-and-andrew-shiva-gallery-john-jay-college-of-criminal-justice/the-rogues-gallery/paperback/product-23404116.html

Location: Shiva Gallery, located just inside the 11th Avenue entrance to John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Address: 860 11th Avenue (between 58th & 59th St), New York, NY 10019.

The Shiva Gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 10am – 6pm. 

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A large portion of the items on view are from the Richard Tomlinson, the Aggie Whelan Kenny, and the Elizabeth Williams Courtroom Drawings Collections, all housed in the Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections.