Bruno's request denied

The case has been under seal since reports of a tax probe were made public.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
CLEVELAND -- Boardman attorney Lynn Sfara Bruno has been denied the $73,161 she said she spent in legal fees gearing up to fight DUI case-fixing charges that were eventually dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. O'Malley issued the denial order this week and placed it under seal, which means her conclusions are not public at this time.
One of Sfara Bruno's Cleveland attorneys, Patrick M. McLaughlin, said Friday that he is not permitted to comment on the order because it is under seal. He also had no comment about the possibility of appeal.
All filings in the Sfara Bruno case have been placed under seal since early January after The Vindicator reported that while Sfara Bruno was off the hook for fixing DUIs, the government said she failed to tell the IRS how much money clients really paid her for the fixed cases.
The revelation was contained in the government's 77-page challenge to Sfara Bruno's request to recoup $73,161 in legal fees.
"Under ordinary circumstances, the government would not acknowledge the existence of a criminal [tax] investigation," Thomas J. Gruscinski, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in court papers in January.
The prosecutor said he disclosed it to prevent Sfara Bruno, 42, of Southwoods Boulevard, from saying that the tax investigation, which began before dismissal of the bribery indictment Nov. 9, 2001, was retaliation for her request for legal fees.
Ongoing investigation
In challenging Sfara Bruno's motion for fees, Gruscinski said she "utterly ignores the fact that she is still the subject of a valid, ongoing criminal tax investigation. She has not been vindicated."
In January, McLaughlin called Gruscinski's lengthy response malicious. He said it violated several rules regarding the dissemination of information that deals with criminal proceedings, matters before a grand jury, plea discussions and privacy.
"What the government failed to achieve in its aborted indictment of Mrs. Bruno, it seeks to achieve through this vexatious filing and its obvious promotion of prejudicial publicity which makes a mockery of the fair administration of justice," McLaughlin said in his motion.
Judge O'Malley then granted a defense request to file everything under seal.
Sfara Bruno's two-count indictment, handed up Sept. 12, 2001, charged extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion. The government said Sfara Bruno gave James A. Philomena cash, gifts and campaign contributions between January 1991 and December 1996. At the time, Philomena, now in federal prison, was Mahoning County prosecutor.
Case-fixing charges
In return for the cash and gifts, Philomena directed James A. Vitullo, then an assistant prosecutor in Austintown, to reduce or dismiss DUI charges for Sfara Bruno's clients, the government said. The indictment listed five cases, four of which were in Mahoning County Court in Austintown when Vitullo served there.
Vitullo was found innocent at trial in October.
Philomena, who reached a plea agreement with the government in September 1999, testified at Vitullo's trial and was scheduled to be the star witness for Sfara Bruno's trial, which had been set for Dec. 4, 2001.
In late September 2001, Gruscinski told another of Sfara Bruno's Cleveland lawyers, John F. McCaffrey, that "win, lose or draw" at trial, the government intended to seek criminal tax charges against her. The conversation took place just minutes before Sfara Bruno's bribery arraignment.
'Tax problems'
A month later, McCaffrey, the federal prosecutor said, acknowledged that his client "has tax problems," as did McCaffrey's investigator, who admitted Sfara Bruno had filed false tax returns.
As an example, Gruscinski cited one DUI client from whom Sfara Bruno collected $10,000 but reported only $2,500 to the IRS. "The same pattern held true for virtually all of the cases listed in [Sfara Bruno's] indictment," he said.
McCaffrey had based his client's right to remuneration of $73,161 on the Hyde Amendment. The legislation was enacted to curb prosecutorial abuse and allow a prevailing defendant to collect reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs.
McCaffrey had wanted Judge O'Malley to conclude that actions by the FBI and federal prosecutors were "vexatious, frivolous and/or in bad faith."
McCaffrey said the amount did not include any pre-indictment money spent that his client could properly request.
Case in doubt
On Nov. 2, a month before her scheduled trial, Sfara Bruno agreed to plead guilty to tax charges if the bribery indictment was dismissed. She changed her mind two days later, Gruscinski said in his challenge to her attempt to collect legal fees.
Gruscinski said Philomena's recollection of a September 1996 DUI wavered after he spoke to Sfara Bruno's lawyers, although he still maintained that Sfara Bruno had paid him several times to fix other DUIs.
With the 1996 case in doubt, the government had no others in the indictment that met the five-year statute of limitations and sought to dismiss the indictment.
"In any of these situations, it was not the outcome of the DUI case that was illegal," Gruscinski said in court papers. "It was [Sfara Bruno's] payment of a bribe to Philomena that was illegal -- regardless of what ultimately happened in return."
Sfara Bruno resigned as a Youngstown Municipal Court magistrate in December 2001 after the FBI told the presiding judge that she was the target of a criminal investigation.
She told The Vindicator, however, that she left the $50,000-a-year part-time job because of her increased private law practice.
meade@vindy.com