Judge in Fumo case recuses himself
The federal corruption trial of state Sen. Vince Fumo and a former aide, which is scheduled to resume on Oct. 20, took yet another turn yesterday.
The federal corruption trial of state Sen. Vince Fumo and a former aide, which is scheduled to resume on Oct. 20, took yet another turn yesterday.
The case was reassigned by U.S. District Chief Judge Harvey Bartle III to U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter.
No reason was given in the one-paragraph order from Bartle, except to say that the judge who had been presiding over the case since 2006, U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr., had "recused" himself.
It's unclear how all this will affect, if at all, the resumption of the trial next month.
An aide to Buckwalter said yesterday that the judge would convene a meeting soon with prosecutors and defense attorneys to discuss the case.
The aide said that Buckwalter's calendar was "generally pretty clear." The trial is expected to last three months.
Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys had any comment yesterday.
The two sides had selected an intermediate pool of jurors and were prepared to exercise their peremptory challenges and make opening statements on Sept. 22, when Yohn requested that final jury selection and opening statements be postponed until Oct. 20.
Yohn had been suffering from flulike symptoms during the initial stages of jury selection. His aide said that he did not know why the judge had recused himself.
Buckwalter, 71, a former Common Pleas judge in Lancaster County, was nominated to the federal bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1989 and confirmed by the Senate in March 1990. He went on senior, or semiretired, status at the end of 2003.
He's no stranger to high-profile trials, having presided over the 1995 trial of Philadelphia mob boss John Stanfa. *
