Fumo jurors struck by "overwhelming evidence"

In the end, the verdict against Vincent J. Fumo was a resounding affirmation of the federal government's case against the once-powerful lawmaker.

Count by count, the jurors rejected Fumo's testimony, rejected the central themes of his defense, and rejected his lawyer's promise back in October that they would conclude that the prosecution's evidence was "decidedly one-sided and grossly distorted."

For 13 minutes, the word guilty rang out over and over in the hushed courtroom as Fumo was convicted of all 137 charges against him. His codefendant, Ruth Arnao, was found guilty of all 45 counts against her.

In interviews after the verdict, jurors said they were struck by the totality of the evidence in the case, including more than 1,300 e-mails and other documents presented by federal prosecutors.

"I was hoping to find some reasonable doubt, and it was so difficult," said juror Myrna DeVoren of Haverford, Montgomery County. "The evidence was so clear."

"The overwhelming evidence was there," said juror Greg Brecker of Souderton, Montgomery County.

He, too, said they had looked for ways to acquit. "We were trying to find him innocent on at least some of the counts," said Brecker, who works as government liaison for a union.

For nearly an hour, the jurors talked about the case against Fumo, the experience of serving on a high-profile case, and the process of sifting through the evidence after listening to more than four months of testimony.

"It's unreal, just how long the process was," said Kaylyn Fain, 25, of East Greenville, Montgomery County, who works at Thomas Jefferson University.

Several said they viewed Fumo as a politician who seemed to have started off with good intentions but eventually crossed the line.

"My sense is he started out to be fair and accountable, and I heard a lot of good things," said DeVoren. But gradually, she said, she saw a different view of him.

"All of a sudden, it just started to shift," said DeVoren, who found herself thinking, "What happened to caring and helping?"

"OPM," said juror Betty Burkett, a retired social worker, referring to the trial's famous acronym for "Other People's Money" - which one witness quoted Fumo as having said he liked to spend.

"Greed," said juror Antoinette Randell, a lab technician from Perkasie, Bucks County.

The jurors said they were especially dismayed by Fumo's comment during his week on the witness stand that his only obligation as a senator was to go to Harrisburg and vote on legislation.

"How dare he," declared juror Kimm Guckin, of Levittown, Bucks County.

"That sunk him," said jury forewoman Karen White.

The verdict made it clear that Fumo did not help himself by testifying, and might have actually made it easier for jurors to find him guilty - especially of defrauding the nonprofit Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.

"He admitted to a lot of it," said White, referring to Fumo's testimony that he accepted tools and other items in return for raising money for the charity.

And while some spectators of the marathon trial had thought that the jury might be lenient when it came to Arnao, the former head of Citizens' Alliance, the jurors clearly found her culpable, too.

"She reaped the benefits, and she was a follower," said Randell.

Eric Wuest, a juror from Collegeville, Montgomery County, said they would have liked to have heard from Arnao.

His Internet postings - including one in which he wrote, "Stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday everyone!" - became an issue yesterday when defense lawyers sought to have him removed from the jury. Wuest said he wasn't discussing the case. "I was discussing that we're done."

The jurors said the weightiness of their task as jurors was lightened by how well they all got along - and that made the process easier when they finally started to deliberate.

"It was a lot of information to absorb," said Guckin.

They were a diverse group, with nearly half of them living along either side of Route 309, from Bucks and Montgomery County towns all the way up to Allentown and Bethlehem. Nine are white, three are African American. Only two lived in Philadelphia, and eight of them were registered Democrats.

As one season stretched into another, the jurors bonded, celebrating birthdays during lunch breaks and doing a holiday pollyanna.

When it came time for them to decide on the case, White, a retired school psychologist from Bethlehem, Northampton County, said they paid close attention to the instructions given them by U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter and then went "count by count" through the indictment.

During their five days of deliberation, the jury did not have any questions for the judge.

They did rely on their voluminous notes - each filled between seven and nine notebooks - and called upon one another to remember details.

"If one of us didn't remember the information, another one of us did," said juror Kerry Bissinger, 32, of Allentown.

The jurors rejected the defense contention that Fumo's employees, mostly in his South Philadelphia district office, did personal and political work on their own time - in part by looking closely at the job descriptions.

"There was a disconnect between what they said they did . . . and what their job description was," said White.

Brecker said there also was a persuasive e-mail in which Arnao listed the personal work for Fumo that was to be done by two workers in Fumo's South Philadelphia office.

"They had a couple of smoking-gun e-mails, and they nailed it," said Brecker.

Jurors also rejected Fumo's contention that he was entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and perks because he had gotten Peco Energy Co. to contribute $17 million to the nonprofit.

"It was apparent that this nonprofit was running amok," said White.

Guckin, who works for a nonprofit, said the money should not have been used for tools and other gifts to Fumo. "It should have been used for bigger and better things," she said.

Joanne Pinkston of Philadelphia said that Fumo could have had the nonprofit take on an even more ambitious plan than revitalizing South Philadelphia.

"He had all that money - $17 million that could have done so much for different neighborhoods," she said.

Jurors also rejected the defense theory that it was legal for Fumo to have gotten free cruises from the Independence Seaport Museum because the museum's president had approved it.

"Everybody else knew it was wrong," said Bissinger, in an apparent reference to testimony by other museum officials that they did not know about the cruises.

And finally, jurors said, they rejected Fumo's contention that he believed he could continue his longstanding practice of having his e-mails deleted after conversations with two lawyers, Richard A. Sprague and Robert Scandone.

Brecker said the "government got lucky" because FBI agents were able to salvage some e-mails anyway.

Several jurors said they were struck by Fumo's estrangement from his eldest daughter, Nicole, whose husband testified as a prosecution witness.

Guckin mused that in spite of all of Fumo's material wealth, he never seemed satisfied.

"It seems like he was always searching - always searching - for something that he just didn't have," said Guckin. "Something always seemed to be missing."