Former Mount Vernon city lawyer Lawrence Porcari guilty on corruption charges

Mount Vernon's former top lawyer was found guilty Monday on corruption charges for steering $365,000 in city water funds to criminal defense lawyers of then-Mayor Richard Thomas and a public relations firm hired following the mayor's 2018 arrest.

The jury convicted Lawrence Porcari of first-degree corrupting government, second-degree grand larceny, defrauding government and filing false statements.

Porcari, the Mount Vernon corporation counsel from January 2016 until this July, faces a minimum of one to three years in prison and the loss of his law license. Westchester County Judge David Zuckerman scheduled sentencing for March 4. The maximum for the corruption and grand larceny charges is 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.

The verdict came after the jury sent notes to Zuckerman on three occasions since Friday that they were deadlocked. The third, at around 11:30 am Monday, indicated that "our time is being used unproductively" and that there wasn't a single charge they could agree on unanimously.

Over an objection by the defense, Zuckerman read the jury a so-called Allen, or deadlock, charge, urging them to continue deliberating, not to give up their positions but to search their conscience to see if they can reach common ground with their fellow jurors.

Three hours later they had found Porcari guilty on nearly every charge. In all, the jury deliberated about nine hours over three days.

Defense lawyer Stephen Lewis said he was "tremendously disappointed" by the verdict and that his worst fears about the deadlock charge were realized.

"Its coercive," he said. "It tells the jury that, basically, you've given us three notes for a hung jury but we want you to go back there and start all over again...I think they were afraid that they were going to be kept there for an extraordinary long period of time. And the people who had conscientious feelings that were being advocated in the jury room I think folded."

He said it was too soon to tell whether that would be the basis for any motions to set aside the verdict.

Porcari was the city's corporation counsel when he was indicted alone in May after the state Attorney General's Office investigated the mayor's reliance on public money for his personal use.

Thomas himself was not indicted regarding the water funds after he testified before the grand jury. He said he was "shocked and saddened" by the verdict.

"My heart and prayers are with Larry and his family as we go through this chapter of suffering," he said.

The mayor was charged by the same prosecutors last year with stealing $12,900 from his political committee and failing to report on city ethics forms his receipt of more than $75,000 from his inaugural committee and other sources. He was deemed to have vacated his office after he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges related to the campaign funds in July.

In the spring of 2018, Porcari approved the mayor's request that he be represented at the city's expense. When the city council president and the comptroller — the mayor's fellow members of the Board of Estimate and Contract — would not vote on one of the lawyers and on the public relations firm, Porcari urged Benjamin Marable, the commissioner of the Board of Water Supply, to pay the expenses, which he did.

Marable had been threatened with prosecution but testified before the grand jury and at the trial under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors.

In his memos to Marable, Porcari called the expenses emergencies and wrote that they were needed because "scheduling difficulties" prevented the Board of Estimate from acting on them. Prosecutors Megan Powers and Brian Weinberg urged jurors to recognize those as lies to further the scheme to defraud — that without them Porcari could not have obtained the money for the mayor.

Porcari was found not guilty only of the first of four counts of first-degree offering a false statement for filing related to the memos. For that one he was convicted instead of the misdemeanor charge of second-degree offering a false statement. Unlike the felony charge, that did not require an intent to defraud.

It was irrelevant that Porcari did not pocket any of the money because he could be guilty of the theft by allowing someone else to benefit from the scheme, the prosecution argued.

Prosecutors focused on the prohibition against using water department funds for items that had nothing to do with the needs of the department. But Porcari's lawyer detailed the dozens of checks issued by the water department in recent years to pay for televisions for City Hall, recreation programs, needs of the Urban Renewal Agency and more as dysfunction reigned in City Hall and the comptroller was not paying routine bills.

Nearly all of the money went to the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner, whose partner Randall Jackson represented Thomas from May to October 2018, and to Florida lawyers Michael Pizzi and Benedict Kuehne, the mayor's lawyers after Jackson. The PR firm, Todd Shapiro & Associates, received $5,000, after showing up for the first time the day of Thomas' arrest.

Porcari, 62, lives in Yonkers, where he spent several years as an assistant corporation counsel before Thomas tapped him for his administration following his election in 2015.

Lewis said his client was devastated by the verdict. He argued that Porcari had believed he did nothing wrong - so much so that he was shocked by his indictment last May because he had not even realized he was under investigation.

Twitter: @jonbandler