Fawell attorney scorns ’smoke and mirrors’ evidence

From the Chicago Tribune:

Fawell attorney scorns ’smoke and mirrors’ evidence

By Mike Robinson
Associated Press

March 10, 2003, 6:28 PM CST

A defense attorney ripped into the racketeering case against former Gov. George Ryan’s longtime top aide, Scott Fawell, on Monday, saying the witnesses were so terrified ``they would do anything.’’

Edward Genson said Fawell’s former co-workers were so desperate to save themselves from criminal charges in connection with the Ryan scandal they told prosecutors anything they wanted to hear in return for a deal.

``Most everyone in this case got immunity or passes and most everyone blamed Scott Fawell,’’ Genson said. ``They knew that if you stick Scott a little you’re going to get a pass.’’

``A trial based on this kind of deal is not a truth-finding process,’’ Genson said in a four-and-a-half hour closing argument.

Fawell, 45, and the campaign committee are charged in a nine-count racketeering indictment with using taxpayer dollars and state employees working on state time to fuel Ryan’s campaigns for almost a decade.

Most of the wrongdoing alleged focuses on the eight years Ryan was Illinois secretary of state before his 1998 election as governor.

Fawell, from a prominent DuPage County Republican family, served as Ryan’s chief of staff as secretary of state and 1998 campaign manager.

The trial is now in its eighth week. U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer had hoped the jury would start deliberations late Monday.

But that proved overly optimistic. She told jurors to come back Tuesday for final arguments from Citizens for Ryan attorney Thomas Breen and rebuttal from the government’s chief prosecutor, Patrick Collins.

Genson said prosecutors granted wholesale immunity to Fawell’s former co-workers after frightening them into making up tales about Fawell.

``They are in trouble, they are scared and they all of a sudden remember some meeting with Scott Fawell where George Ryan was there,’’ he added. He said ``they would do anything’’ to please federal prosecutors.

Genson sought to demolish the credibility of chief prosecution witness Richard Juliano, who had been Ryan’s deputy campaign manager under Fawell, noting that even after he made a deal with prosecutors he withheld the information that he had gone to lobbyists to get his wife no-work jobs.

He also ridiculed Juliano for writing his own recommendation letter to the University of Chicago law school and signing Ryan’s name to it.

``How hard is it for this guy to make up a story?’’ Genson said. He noted that Juliano is expecting leniency in exchange for his testimony.

He cautioned jurors against believing that the political system itself was on trial and said the system had proven it can deal with scandals such as the one surrounding Ryan’s tenure in the secretary of state’s office.

``As I understand it, the Ryan administration was thrown out of office pretty soundly,’’ Genson said. In fact, Ryan declined to seek a second term after the scandal got worse and his standing in the polls took a nosedive.

So far, 59 former state employees and others have been charged and 53 convicted. Ryan himself has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

Genson noted that dozens of campaign workers and others whose names surfaced over and over again at the trial did not take the witness stand.

``They’re like ghosts,’’ he said.

He focused some of his most scornful rhetoric on prosecution witness Larry Hall, who got a job in the secretary of state’s office through boyhood friend Fawell then turned on him after being caught bid-rigging.

``He’ll make up anything to get himself out of trouble,’’ Genson said. ``It’s obvious what kind of guy he is.’’

He recalled how prosecutors had fitted Hall with a hidden recording device and sent him to lure state Sen. James ``Pate’’ Philip, R-Wood Dale, into a chat about a shopping center owner who allegedly made a campaign contribution to keep a state agency from leaving her shopping center.

The 72-year-old Philip, a defense witness, denied there was any deal.

``That’s an old man and these guys go in there and try to bully him into saying something, and he didn’t,’’ Genson told the jury.

Likewise, he scoffed at testimony from former Ryan aide William Mack, who said that at Fawell’s request he presided over a massive shredding session in the secretary of state’s office to keep political papers out of the hands of federal investigators. Mack testified under immunity.