Prosecutors want former North Hills Republican state Senator Jane Orie to pay up to $780,000 in penalties when she's sentenced on conflict of interest and other charges for using state-funded staff and materials to do political campaign and fundraising work over an eight-year period.
The demands are contained in a 68-page sentencing memorandum filed by Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Claus this week.
The memo does not detail how much prison time, if any, Claus believes Orie should receive for misusing her staff and forging defense documents. She was found guilty of five felonies and nine misdemeanors. The jury found Orie used her staff to raise more than $1.8 million for her campaign and to work her re-election campaigns in 2002 and 2006, and that she forged documents used to discredit a key witness before a mistrial was declared on the campaign corruption charges last year.
"I'll present our position on any incarceration at the time of the sentencing itself," said Claus.
Orie was acquitted of charges that she used her staff to help campaign for her sister, State Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin.
Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning is scheduled to sentence Orie June 4, though he's also been asked to rule before then on a previous prosecution motion that Orie also repay $1.3 million that Claus contends the state Senate spent on Orie's defense.
Defense attorney William Costopoulos didn't immediately return a call and email for comment. He is expected to argue those fees weren't for defense work, per se, but to guide the Republican caucus as it complied with the prosecution's voluminous searches of the Senate computer system during the investigation.
The proposed monetary penalties Claus spells out in the sentencing memorandum are over and above any liability Orie might have for the Senate's legal bills.
Orie was convicted of three felony counts of theft of services and two of conflict of interest, which prevent lawmakers from using their staff or other state resources for personal gain.
According to Claus, state law requires someone convicted of the conflict of interest felonies to pay a penalty equal to triple the value of the resources they used "in addition to any other penalty."
Claus argued in the motion that there are two ways to calculate the value Orie received from misusing her staff, and that Judge Manning should pick one and apply it to Orie.
The first approach is based on more than $1.8 million that Orie's staff helped her raise in political donations and testimony that professional fundraisers would likely have charged a 10% commission on that money, or $184,318. If the judge opts to triple that amount, Orie could be ordered to pay nearly $553,000.
The other is to calculate the payroll dollars spent on 16 staffers who testified to doing political work from 2001 to 2009. A detective calculated those services were worth at least $260,000, resulting in a possible penalty of $780,000.
Claus's memo also argues that Orie should pay the costs of prosecution — which are still being calculated by the clerk of courts — but will include nearly $5,200 in overtime for 18 sheriff's deputies who guarded the jury during five days of sequestered deliberations in her second trial. Claus argued Orie should pay those costs because her use of forged documents at her first trial led to a mistrial and the need for another trial.
Claus is also targeting roughly $110,000 he contends Orie still has in leftover campaign funds.
Claus noted that campaign finance records show Orie has already used campaign funds to pay for more than $100,000 in legal fees to Costopoulos and various other "personal" expenses — including $420 to charter a bus that brought some 50 character witnesses to her trial.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
