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State v. Diprete5/1/1998
a grand jury investigating activities of Joseph Mollicone, Jr. (Mollicone), and the Heritage Loan Company.
Defense counsel and their agents extracted eighty-nine exhibits from the thirty boxes of material that had been provided by the state. The trial justice found that the most important exhibits related to three unindicted coconspirators, Rodney M. Brusini (Brusini), Frank N. Zaino (Zaino), and Michael W. Piccoli (Piccoli), who were all granted immunity or a letter of non-prosecution by the Department of the Attorney General, and to Mathies J. Santos (Santos), who was granted a promise of non-prosecution.
On the basis of these findings, defense counsel moved for sanctions, claiming that the information extracted from the materials provided on July 29, 1996, included information previously ordered to be produced on August 24, 1995. Counsel for defendants alleged that the extracted materials showed that the state knew Brusini had committed perjury in March of 1992, that he had filed false documents with the State Ethics Commission, that he had committed tax fraud, that he had overbilled the state for work done, and that he had committed insurance fraud.
The defendants also alleged that the state had withheld evidence of knowledge of tax fraud on the part of Zaino, that attorneys for the state assisted Zaino in amending a 1991 state tax return and were aware that Zaino had filed a false affidavit concerning his financial affairs with the Rhode Island Family Court during divorce proceedings, and that he had maintained a secret bank account at Rhode Island Hospital Trust Bank in order to hide money from his wife during the pendency of their divorce. The defendants also claimed that the state was aware of other crimes committed by Zaino.
In respect to Piccoli the recently provided materials indicated that a representative of the Attorney General's office had sought lenient treatment at a sentencing hearing wherein Piccoli had pleaded guilty to defrauding the city of Cranston of an alleged sum exceeding $l million. The defendants asserted that these materials indicated that the state recommended that Piccoli receive no jail time and make a restitution payment of only $135,000, significantly less than the amount he had fraudulently obtained. Counsel for defendants further claimed that the state knew of other criminal conduct that had been committed by Piccoli in connection with both construction projects for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation and his position at the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation.
In regard to Santos, defendants alleged in their motion for sanctions that the state knew that he had committed the crimes of bribery and extortion and had a conflict of interest in connection with his receipt of a $142,000 loan on favorable terms from Mollicone at a time when Santos as a state official was taking actions that benefited Mollicone. The defendants claimed that Santos was instrumental in obtaining a state agency as a tenant for a building owned by Mollicone and sought to obtain other tenancies that would benefit Mollicone. The defendants further claimed that the state's refraining from prosecution of Santos for bank fraud in connection with his loan application constituted a promise, reward, or inducement that should have been disclosed.
The state contended that all this information was available in other forms within the massive amount of discovery provided in the 600 boxes of materials furnished pursuant to the parties' stipulation and earlier orders of the court. The trial Justice rejected the state's contentions and found, after the Conclusion of a thirty-two-day evidentiary hearing, that counsel for the stat
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Rhode Island Personal Injury Attorneys
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