|
|
9486 in the collection
Hornsby Convicted On 6 Counts
Enter "Hornsby" into a search on this site and you can get the gory history.
By Henri E. Cauvin and Ruben Castaneda
Andre J. Hornsby, the former Prince George's County public schools chief whose first corruption trial ended in a hung jury last year, was convicted yesterday on six of the 22 federal charges brought against him in his retrial.
The jury, which had been deliberating since July 15, acquitted Hornsby of two charges and deadlocked on the rest.
The conviction caps an extraordinary fall for Hornsby, who arrived in Upper Marlboro in 2003 with a reputation for making waves and with a mandate to turn around the county's troubled school system.
Now, three years after he resigned amid a federal investigation, Hornsby, 54, faces a substantial prison sentence. Each of the fraud counts on which he was convicted carries up to 20 years, and each of the tampering and obstruction counts carries a maximum of 10 years.
Hornsby, who was accused of steering school system contracts to his girlfriend and to a longtime business associate in exchange for kickbacks, was convicted of honest-services wire fraud, attempted evidence tampering and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted of one wire fraud count and one attempted witness tampering count.
In the hushed fourth-floor courtroom where the trial unfolded, Hornsby sat attentive and almost still as the jury foreman went down the verdict form. Next to Hornsby was his attorney, Robert C. Bonsib. Across the aisle were the prosecutors, Stuart A. Berman and Michael R. Pauzé, and one of the case agents from the FBI, John M. Sheridan.
Each of the first five counts, all wire fraud, came back as deadlocked. It was not until the sixth count, another wire fraud charge, that Hornsby heard the word he was dreading: guilty. Five more guilty verdicts followed, for additional counts of wire fraud, attempted evidence tampering and obstruction of justice.
All three wire fraud charges on which Hornsby was convicted involved e-mail communications from his ex-girlfriend Sienna Owens that were related to a deal between her company, LeapFrog SchoolHouse, and the school system.
U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte set Hornsby's sentencing for Oct. 20 and, at the request of prosecutors, ordered him to surrender his passport.
Leaving the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Hornsby said nothing, deferring to Bonsib to speak for him. "We're obviously disappointed," Bonsib said. The jury struggled with many of the charges, he said, but not all of them. "Obviously the jury was persuaded by some of the evidence. We disagree."
After not securing any guilty verdicts in the first trial, the conviction of Hornsby was a welcome victory for the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland and for the FBI.
"The evidence in this case demonstrated that Andre Hornsby abused his power for private financial gain, tampered with witnesses and obstructed a federal investigation," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. "Public officials must pursue the public interest and not line their own pockets at taxpayer expense."
In interviews outside the courthouse, jurors said the complexity of the case against Hornsby, with 28 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, made deliberations difficult. They said it was particularly so at the beginning, as they wrestled with how to approach the evidence and the voluminous instructions.
"I don't think there was any unanimity at the outset," said Larry Boswell, a database systems manager from Montgomery County. "It was a very complicated case."
Once they considered the evidence, however, at least a few of the verdicts were clear, juror Audrey Stewart said. "With some of the evidence that was presented to us, we couldn't help but say guilty because it was right there," said Stewart, who lives in Bowie and works as a librarian for the federal government.
Stewart said that she did not think Hornsby set out to commit crimes but that he let his ambitions get the best of him. "I know what he was trying to do," she said. "I know his number one concern were the kids of Prince George's County."
The case involved Hornsby's role in negotiating two contracts and the women with whom he negotiated, Owens and longtime business associate Cynthia Joffrion.
Owens, a sales representative for LeapFrog, an educational technology company, testified that she gave Hornsby half of her $20,000 commission after the two secretly negotiated a contract with the school system worth almost a million dollars. Joffrion, a consultant who helped school systems obtain federal technology grants, agreed to pay Hornsby $145,000 after he arranged for her to negotiate a consulting contract with Prince George's schools, prosecutors said.
One juror said testimony that Hornsby sent his oldest daughter to Florida to speak to Owens was crucial in the decision to convict him of evidence tampering and obstruction.
"He had to know there was something wrong to go and send her" to speak to Owens, said the juror, who declined to provide his name or any other background details, citing privacy concerns.
What was perhaps the most sensational piece of evidence in the government's case, a video of Hornsby pocketing what prosecutors said was a $1,000 deposit on the $145,000 payoff, was not for jurors the smoking gun it might have seemed.
On the recording, Hornsby is seen inside a Bowie motel room taking cash from Joffrion, who was secretly cooperating with the FBI.
The juror who declined to be identified derided it, calling it a "setup."
Jury foreman Morgan Bantly was more diplomatic. "It was another piece of evidence to consider," said Bantly, 54, who works for the Department of Veterans Affairs. "It didn't have the impact the public probably assumed it would."
The jurors indicated Tuesday morning that although they had reached verdicts on some of the 22 counts, they were deadlocked on others. As is customary when a jury first says it is at an impasse, the judge instructed the jurors to continue deliberating.
The jurors deliberated the rest of the day Tuesday and most of yesterday before reporting that they were still deadlocked on some charges. Messitte, who earlier rejected defense requests to have the jurors announce whatever verdicts they had reached, did take the verdicts after the final note, which came in at 2:59 p.m.
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
— Henri E. Cauvin and Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post
2008-07-24
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
|
