Defense: Ex-DA is too smart for forgery

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Republican state Sen. Jane Orie began her career as a prosecutor and knows too much about evidence and the criminal justice system to commit the obvious document forgeries attributed to her, Orie’s lawyer told a jury Wednesday.

Orie, 50, of McCandless, is being retried on 10 campaign corruption charges. Her first trial ended in a mistrial last year because of a forged defense exhibit. Her new trial now also includes 16 new counts, including perjury, forgery and evidence tampering related to Orie’s testimony and documents introduced at the first trial.

One document was so obviously doctored Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning said “even Ray Charles could see” it in granting the prosecution’s request for mistrial.

In opening statements Wednesday, defense attorney William Costopoulos noted that Orie spent six years as an assistant district attorney and nearly four more as a deputy state attorney general before becoming a lawmaker.

“You don’t prosecute cases without knowing what forensic evidence is all about,” Costopoulos said. The forgery “looks like the work-product of a grade-school student. A fifth- grader at best.”

Costopoulos said at last year’s trial that he couldn’t recognize the writings as forged. But he told the jury Wednesday that he agrees with U.S. Secret Service experts that the documents were forged — just not by his client.

Costopoulos told the jury he doesn’t know who forged the documents, but said the prosecution can’t say either. The forgeries were done either “by somebody intending to do her harm, or to help her in a misguided thought process,” he said.

But Deputy Allegheny County District Attorney Lawrence Claus told the jury that Orie’s response hasn’t wavered since the “deep, dark, dirty secrets” of the alleged campaign corruption emerged in the fall of 2009: “Cover it up.”

Orie is charged with theft of services, conflict of interest, evidence tampering and conspiring — with her sister, Janine Orie — to direct the senator’s state-funded staff to do campaign work for her and a third sister, Joan Orie Melvin, in Melvin’s judicial campaigns. The alleged crimes date back to 2001. Melvin is not charged.

Janine Orie, who was suspended from her $67,000-a-year job as Melvin’s aide, was tried with the senator last year. Since the mistrial, she also was charged with directing Melvin’s former Superior Court staff to do illegal campaign work when Melvin unsuccessfully ran for the Supreme Court in 2003 and then won a seat in 2009.

Janine Orie will be tried a second time but separately from the senator. Her trial has yet to be scheduled.