Vindicated Bongiovanni says he won’t seek bench again

Monday, Nov. 2, 1998 | 11:13 a.m.

Investigators took two years to gather the evidence, but a jury needed less than eight hours to weigh it and decide prosecutors didn't have a case against former district court Judge Gerard Bongiovanni.

Bongiovanni was found innocent Friday of 13 charges of bribery and wire fraud.

Jurors in the U.S. District Court began deliberating the case late Thursday afternoon, broke for the day at 4:30 p.m. and resumed work at 8:30 a.m. Friday. They had a verdict by 4 p.m.

It was the second trial for Bongiovanni in less than a year. His first, last December, resulted in a hung jury with 10 jurors reportedly voting for acquittal.

"This has fortified my belief in the United States' judicial system," said Bongiovanni at the conclusion of the two-week-long trial. "The system works. I always knew it would."

Defense attorney Thomas Pitaro said the four-year ordeal has taken a "terrible toll" on his client.

"Thank God for the jury system," Pitaro said.

Suspended from office shortly after being indicted on the corruption charges, Bongiovanni said after the verdict was in he has no desire to return to the bench but instead will return to the practice of law.

"I would be afraid to get on the telephone and then have to explain what I said three or four years later," he said.

The federal government's case against Bongiovanni started with taped telephone conversations in 1993 and 1994.

FBI Special Agent Jerry Hanford testifed at trial that while taping Paul Dottore and Terry Salem, suspects in an unrelated banking fraud, he became suspicious of Bongiovanni. Dottore was a close friend of the then-judge.

The FBI and federal prosecutors started taping Bongiovanni in 1994, then set up a sting operation to try to catch the judge accepting bribes. Dottore and Salem were given lighter prison sentences on the bank fraud charges for their cooperation.

The sting involved Salem offering a bribe through Dottore, with payment being made in marked money.

When FBI agents arrested Bongiovanni shortly after Dottore left his home on an evening in October 1995, they found $500 in marked bills in the judge's pocket and the rest of the money in Dottore's possession.

Bongiovanni said the money was for repayment of a loan that had been made to Dottore. Dottore later admitted to owing the judge $500.

Prosecutors also based their case on an allegation that "Splash" producer Jeff Kutash bribed Bongiovanni for special treatment in a civil suit then in Bongiovanni's court. Kutash was acquitted in the case last year.

Bongiovanni said Dottore befriended him at a vulnerable period in the judge's life: His wife, Marilyn, was suffering from multiple sclerosis -- a disease that claimed her life in July 1996.

"I was very trustworthy of him. Maybe I wouldn't have been friends with him if not for my wife's illness," he said.

Bongiovanni denied during his testimony he ever received any bribe money, and Pitaro noted that some promised favors never materialized.

Pitaro conceded that Bongiovanni did help people with such matters as scheduling traffic tickets for resolution or granting no-bail releases for prisoners. But the defense lawyer said that such acts are routine for all judges and legal under Nevada law.

Pitaro argued that Dottore was the only one who profiteered from his admitted bribe solicitations and said his stories of passing the money along to Bongiovanni couldn't be believed.