Jury convicts 1 ex-hospital exec of corruption

PROVIDENCE—A federal jury on Monday convicted a former hospital president of paying a state lawmaker for influence at the Statehouse, but acquitted another executive of participating in the scheme.

The verdicts offered more mixed results for prosecutors who have placed two ex-lawmakers in prison as part of their probe into corruption at the Statehouse, but who also lost the only other jury trial related to the investigation.

The jury deliberated over five days before finding Robert Urciuoli, the former president and chief executive of Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence, guilty of bribing former state Sen. John Celona.

Urciuoli was convicted of conspiracy and 35 counts of mail fraud. The jury acquitted former hospital vice president Frances Driscoll of aiding and abetting in a mail fraud scheme.

Urciuoli will be free on bond pending sentencing on March 6. The conspiracy charge and roughly half the fraud counts carry punishments of up to five years in prison each, but due to 2002 changes in federal sentencing laws, the other half carry 20-year maximums.

“The verdict with regard to Mr. Urciuoli is completely against the evidence that was presented in this case,“ said Howard Cooper, a lawyer for Urciuoli. He said he was confident the convictions would be reversed on appeal.

This was the executives’ second trial. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston overturned their 2006 convictions in January, saying the judge should not have allowed the jurors to consider Celona’s lobbying of local officials for more ambulance runs to the hospital as evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Prosecutors streamlined the retrial, dumping Celona as their key witness and not presenting information about Celona’s interactions with town officials.

“Obviously, this trial looked a lot different than the first time around, but the core story remained the same,“ U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente told reporters outside court Monday.

Celona, who is serving a federal prison sentence, began working for Roger Williams in early 1998 and earned roughly $260,000 through January 2004.

Theoretically hired to tout the assisted-living home’s virtues among his senior constituents, prosecutors said the real purpose of his job was to serve as the hospital’s secret lobbyist. Defense lawyers argued Celona did legitimate community outreach work for the medical center and an affiliated assisted-living home. They also said the executives relied on an advisory opinion from the state Ethics Commission that allowed him to Celona testified extensively against Urciuoli and Driscoll in the first trial, saying the two directed him to vote in the hospital’s favor on various bills and he followed their wishes to keep his job.

But prosecutors opted not to call Celona again after his testimony during the first trial and another trial last spring was picked apart by defense lawyers who seized on inconsistencies and contradictions to call his credibility into question.

In May, Celona’s flawed testimony led jurors to deliberate just 90 minutes before acquitting two former executives of the CVS pharmacy chain of bribing the lawmaker for legislative favors. It remains the only other “Operation Dollar Bill” case to go to trial.

“The prosecutors in this case, having the experience that we’ve had with Senator Celona over time, obviously had to make some adjustments, and I think they made those very professionally,“
Corrente said.

Celona and another ex-legislator, Gerard Martineau, have pleaded guilty to selling the influence of their office, and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island agreed last year to pay $20 million and make reforms to avoid criminal charges.

Corrente has said the investigation was ongoing.