Fumo sentencing is a scene of high drama

He walked into the courtroom pushing the wheelchair of a political ally.

He held his weeping 19-year-old daughter after she begged the judge not to send him away for too long.

And he left, eight hours later, as a man headed for prison, though not for nearly as long as many had expected.

The sentencing of former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo turned into courtroom drama yesterday, a teary production sustained by hope, exasperation, anxiety, and disappointment.

"I've made mistakes in my life," Fumo told the judge, his voice small and broken. "I've lived with this torment, day in and day out, for years now. What's going to happen? Where are they going to go next? What's going to happen? What's going to happen?"

A short while later, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald J. Buckwalter answered that question. Fumo, among the most powerful politicians in Pennsylvania before his corruption conviction, was going to prison for 55 months.

"It's a joke," said Dick Burns, 74, a retired banker from Greenville, Del., who is a trial watcher and sat through most of the 22-week proceeding.

"Tremendous disappointment," added his friend Joe Cooper, 71, of Northeast Philadelphia, who watched with him.

In the courtroom yesterday, Fumo was the sun around which all the planets turned. But he was a sun in eclipse. And if his sentence brought some relief to his friends, it spurred sour disappointment from those who saw a corrupt politician getting off light.

The day began at 9:20 a.m., when Fumo wheeled State Sen. Tina Tartaglione into the courtroom.

Fumo, 66, looked sallow. He sat slumped behind the defense table in Courtroom 14-A, occasionally turning to acknowledge someone in the crowd behind him but often staring into space.

Space - the physical kind - soon forced the proceedings to be moved downstairs, to a larger courtroom, to accommodate scores who waited in line.

"This is a public session, and I'm the public," one woman said, demanding to be let in.

Fumo sat with his daughter, Allie, on his left, and his fiancee, Carolyn Zinni, on his right. Behind and around them, 300 people filled the courtroom, many of them supporting the former senator.

There were people from the neighborhood, people who went way back, people who remembered the time that Fumo made a call or got involved to help a good cause. There were people with big names.

Peter Nero was there. So were entrepreneur Lewis Katz, State Sen. Shirley Kitchen and City Councilman Frank DiCicco.

The courtroom was like ice. People blew into their hands to warm their fingers.

Before the sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Pease told the judge that Fumo deserved more than 15 years in prison. "He didn't need to steal," the prosecutor said. "He stole because he could."

But Pease didn't have the last word. Fumo's friends told how he worked countless hours - turned Delaware Avenue from a dump into a destination, put lights on the Ben Franklin Bridge, opened the Philadelphia waterfront by adding ramps to I-95.

"With Sen. Fumo not there," Tartaglione told the judge, "it's going to be a hardship for the city of Philadelphia."

It was Fumo himself who everyone wanted to hear. And he stepped before the judge nearly seven hours after the proceedings began.

"God expects the most from those he's given the most to," he began. "I've tried to live my life that way. And it was fun. It's fun to be able to help people."

His voice broke, and he began to weep.

The judge responded with a list of considerations that would determine the senator's sentence - and a hint of what was to come.

"The work you did for the Senate, I think that was exceptional," the judge said. "Most politicians just don't do what you do."

They already knew that in the neighborhood around the headquarters of Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, the South Philadelphia agency that become synonymous with Fumo.

"I think it was fair," said Frances Grabowski, 66, mulling the 55-month sentence. "He didn't kill nobody."

On the steps of a nearby rowhouse, Ed Novak, 63, told his wife, Marilyn, 60: "I told you he wasn't going to jail for long."

"I'm not shocked," Marilyn Novak agreed. "He knows a lot of people and has a lot of influence."