The Coniglio Trial

Coniglio gets 30 months

Former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio was just sentenced to 30 months in federal prison by District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh.

Coniglio exits courthouse

Former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio and his wife, Valerie, left the federal courthouse building without speaking to reporters and photographers who swarmed around the couple as they walked to their car across the street.

Defense attorney Gerald Krovatin also said he would have no comment.

Acting U.S. Attorney calls sentence 'fair'

After sentencing, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra and Weysan Dun, special agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Newark division, spoke to reporters outside the federal courthouse.

Marra said he was satisfied with the sentence.

“It was a very fair sentence,” Marra said, adding that Coniglio would be “joining a coterie of corrupt public officials” serving prison time.

Marra would not address reporters’ questions about why no officials from Hackensack University Medical Center have been prosecuted. At first, Marra said that press reports indicated that there were reforms underway at the hospital, but then simply said he would have no comment.

“I’m not going to comment on Hackensack,” Marra said, adding that actions by officials at the hospital did not excuse Coniglio’s corrupt arrangement.  

He said that an investigation at the hospital continues, but that he would not say who it involved.

Cavanaugh describes sentencing decision

District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh said that he departed downward from the sentence of at least 5 years, three months imprisonment suggested by the federal sentencing guidelines partly because there was little risk that Coniglio would offend again.

The judge said that he was not swayed by Coniglio’s age of 66 or by medical ailments mentioned in the memos filed by defense attorney Gerald Krovatin before sentencing.

Cavanaugh also mentioned that many elected officials and politicians – including the entire borough council in Cliffside Park – sent in letters asking that Coniglio receive a lenient sentence. The letters, Cavanaugh said, seemed to ask him to disregard the verdict of a jury that had paid diligent attention throughout the trial.

Cavanaugh said letters like that one, “kind of flies in the face of what the court system is supposed to be all about.”

But the judge also said that Coniglio had led an exemplary life except for the crimes committed in this case.

“Except for this very unfortunate episode and ill conduct the defendant was never anything but a conscientious, law-abiding citizen.”

Coniglio: 'I take full responsibility'

Before District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh imposed sentence, former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio spoke on his own behalf. He thanked the judge and his staff for their time during trial and apologized for his actions, saying that he took full responsibility.

"The reason I went into politics was to help my community," Coniglio said. "I took my job as a New Jersey state senator very seriously."

"I would like to say that in hindsight, taking the job at Hackensack hospital was bad judgment on my part," he said later. "I take full responsibility for my actions and apologize for those bad choices."
Coniglio's wife, Valerie, sobbed audibly several times as he spoke and as the sentence was read.

Coniglio's voice cracked as well.

Excerpts from defense attorney's statement

Prior to the judge imposing sentence, defense attorney Gerald Krovatin argued that former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio should receive a minimal prison sentence or no prison time at all. Krovatin suggested that a year and a day might be appropriate to serve as a deterrence for others, admitting that Coniglio did trap himself in a conflict of interest by taking a job at Hackensack Unviersity Medical Center while serving as a state senator.

But Krovatin said that a sentence of five to six years, as prosecutors requested, was “totally disproportionate” to Coniglio’s conduct.

Here are some excerpts from Krovatin’s statement to the court:

“No one who knows Joe Coniglio would ever have predicted he would be standing before a federal judge for sentencing - and for good reason, given the extraordinary exemplary life this man has led,” Krovatin said. “This case is still a nightmare that he and his family hope every day they will wake up from and hope it was all a bad dream. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. The reality is that the choices that Joe Coniglio made that have resulted in him standing before you today did not seem like poor choices to him at the time. The thought he might be doing something wrong when he took the job at Hackensack University Medical Center that he might be doing something that might land him in federal prison  -it is fair to say that that never crossed his mind. In hindsight, of course, Joe Coniglio realizes his job … placed him in a conflict of interest, a position where inevitably, his job as a consultant to the hospital   would overlap in significant ways with his job as a state senator.”

Krovatin went on to say that conflicts of interest are punished by state law with fines.

He also pointed out again that no hospital officials on the other end of the bribery scheme have been prosecuted.

Krovatin also stressed that  Coniglio did not pocket the money he received from the state, but rather, that the grant money went to a leading state hospital to further cancer research and other goals.

Judge outlines sentencing guidelines

District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh has confirmed that the appropriate sentencing guidelines call for:

            -63 to 78 months in prison

            -supervised release thereafter of 2 to 3 years

            -fine of $12,500 to $125,000

            -a special assessment of $600

Defense attorney Gerald Krovatin will now argue for a lesser sentence.

Coniglio's turn

The sentencing preceding that of former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio is finished. District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh has called the parties in the Coniglio case forward.

Former state Senator awaits sentencing

Another sentencing is taking place before District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh prior to former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio’s sentencing.

Coniglio and his family are in the courthouse, as is his defense attorney, Gerald Krovatin. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Rachael Honig and Thomas Calcagni, who prosecuted the Coniglio case, are seated in the front row of the courtroom.

Dueling memos paint different pictures of Coniglio

Former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio will be sentenced in federal court in Newark this morning at 10:30 a.m. before District Court Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh.

Prosecutors have asked the judge to adhere to federal sentencing guidelines that advise a prison term of 63 to 78 months. In April, a jury convicted the senator, a plumber by trade, for his role in a bribery scheme that leveraged Coniglio’s political clout for state grants to benefit Hackensack University Medical Center.

Coniglio’s lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, asked the judge to use his discretion to impose a much lesser sentence. Krovatin suggested home confinement and community service could be substituted for prison. Barring that, he asked for six months in prison followed by six months of home confinement or a prison term of no more than a year and a day.

If nothing else, Krovatin wrote, the judge should sentence Coniglio to much less than the minimum that the guidelines suggest.

In dueling memos filed before sentencing, the two sides have painted very different pictures of Coniglio.

Prosecutors say Coniglio traded his pull as a state legislator while on HUMC’s payroll for millions of dollars in state grants for the hospital – taxpayer money for which other hospitals competed vigorously, the government lawyers noted. He wrote letters and networked on the hospital’s behalf and got a raise when grant money came through, they said.

Coniglio also tried to cover up the nature of the work by forming a consulting company to handle business with the hospital, and by telling reporters from The Record that he worked as a plumbing consultant for the hospital, prosecutors said. When an ethics complaint was filed against him by former Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan, Coniglio defended his work by saying he had never lobbied for two grants questioned in the complaint.

Krovatin countered in a memo of his own that Coniglio tried to keep legislative duties and the consulting job separate, though they sometimes overlapped. In the end, he said, the hospital was not harmed and the grants that were secured furthered cancer research and helped sick children.

The defense attorney also pointed out that hospital officials who allegedly were doling out bribes were never prosecuted. He also speculated that the case had political overtones, something prosecutors vigorously denied throughout trial.

Krovatin cited letters from officials such as former state Sen. Bernard Kenney that said Coniglio didn’t have the political muscle to secure the grants.

The former senator is a devoted husband to his wife and high-school sweetheart, Valerie, and has seven grandchildren, Krovatin’s memo said. Dozens of letters from friends and fellow politicians were submitted on his behalf.

The big picture

The verdicts are in. Time for a step back to look at the bigger picture.

Former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio’s trial began March 23. The jury deliberated for nearly four full days.

In the end, Coniglio was found guilty of five of eight charges against him involving a scheme to defraud the public of his honest services and on one count of extortion.

He now faces up from 78 to 97 months in prison when sentenced in July, prosecutors said today.

The U.S. Attorney’s office accused the former legislator of working to steer at least $1.2 million in state funding to Hackensack University Medical Center while working as a paid consultant there. In total, Coniglio was paid $103,900.

During the trial, defense attorneys attempted to portray Coniglio as a senator without enough “juice” in the state Legislature to steer grants of such magnitude to the hospital. Prosecutors argued that his seat on the budget committee enabled him to do just that. Government lawyers also said they did not have to prove any official action had actually occurred – only that there was an agreement that it would.

Several bold-faced names mentioned during the trial were never called to the witness stand, including Senate President Richard Codey and hospital CEO and President John Ferguson.

Other known names did take the stand, including state Sen. Paul Sarlo, former state Sen. Bernard Kenny, Jr. and state Treasurer David Rousseau. Robert Torre, executive vice president of the HUMC Foundation, testified. So did a number of lower-level hospital officials.

Jurors were charged with deciding whether Coniglio had intended to break the law by participating in a quid pro quo bribery scheme in which he agreed to perform official acts in return for payment.
Prosecutors also said he later attempted to conceal the scheme.

In the end, jurors split their votes, deciding that some evidence supported elements of the scheme.

The jury acquitted Coniglio on two mail fraud counts. Here is a description:

*A letter in which Coniglio pitched his services to the hospital to CEO and President John Ferguson. Coniglio’s former chief of staff, Marc Schrieks, testified that he had written the body of the letter. Leon Sokol, an attorney for the state Senate who had advised Coniglio on the job with the hospital, made a few minor tweaks to language in it.

*A letter from Coniglio terminating his employment. The letter had said that since the construction at the Sanzari Women’s and Children’s Pavilion was complete, it was an appropriate breaking point for the working relationship. Sokol said he had drafted that letter.

The count that ended up causing a mistrial dealt with a check the hospital got for $70,000 for a study at the trauma center on seatbelt use. A letter with Coniglio’s signature had gone out to the state Department of Human Services supporting that grant, but Schrieks testified that he had generated such letters automatically.

It was never clear what the former senator actually knew about that letter. Schrieks testified that the two had not discussed it, but later conceded that at some point, the senator would probably have seen a letter listing the letters that had gone out.

But the jury found Coniglio guilty on charges related to the hospital’s receipt of a $250,000 grant for the children’s hospital and a $900,000 grant for the cancer center.

The jury also found Coniglio guilty on counts that dealt with his submission of invoices and subsequent payment for work done on behalf of the hospital by his consulting company, VJC Consulting, LLC.

Finally, the jury found that Coniglio had committed extortion under color of official right.

The former senator left without comment.

The Acting First Assistant U.S. Attorney said at a press conference that the investigation continues.