Curtain rising on bribery trial of former New Orleans City Hall tech vendor | NOLA.com

A high-profile bribery trial begins today for the former City Hall technology vendor who once lavished Mayor Ray Nagin and his chief deputy, Greg Meffert, with tropical vacations and parties and got millions of dollars in city contracts.

That the federal government's oft-delayed case against Mark St. Pierre has reached trial is something of a surprise. Prosecutors have lined up three star witnesses against St. Pierre, cranking up the pressure for him to make a plea deal in the past six months.

The first domino to fall was Meffert himself, who pleaded guilty in November to taking $860,000 in kickbacks from St. Pierre, a friend who once worked for Meffert in the private sector and later became his lead contractor at City Hall.

In December, Anthony Jones, who was hand-picked by Meffert to eventually take over his old position as Nagin's chief technology officer, pleaded guilty to accepting $22,000 in bribes from St. Pierre to expedite some of his city invoices. And in February, one of St. Pierre's top employees, Dwaine Hodges, admitted he conspired with St. Pierre to bribe Jones.

But St. Pierre and his attorney, Eddie Castaing, have held firm to his innocence and his determination to fight the charges. Their defense strategy, however, has shifted somewhat since evidence of St. Pierre and Meffert's financial dealings first emerged in 2006, and particularly in the 18 months since the pair was indicted.

Initially, the most damning evidence the government had against Meffert and St. Pierre was a stack of credit-card receipts. While Meffert was head of Nagin's tech office and while St. Pierre's companies Imagine Software and Veracent were working for Meffert in City Hall, St. Pierre let Meffert rack up $130,000 in personal charges on a card billed to another St. Pierre technology firm called NetMethods. The charges included airfare and other expenses for Nagin and his family to visit Hawaii and Jamaica.

For the longest time, while Meffert and St. Pierre were both in U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's sights, Meffert, St. Pierre and even Nagin maintained that NetMethods was distinct from Imagine and Veracent -- and thus was legally within its rights to shower Meffert and the mayor with gifts.

It appeared the defendants would contend that a "corporate veil" made the arrangement kosher. But that defense took a serious hit when Meffert pleaded guilty. The government, with Meffert's promise to testify, alleges NetMethods was formed in 2004 as much to pay Meffert, whose wife had just lost a high-paying job, as it was to offer other cities the same services as his other firms already performed in New Orleans.

Prosecutors have some evidence to buttress that allegation. St. Pierre started NetMethods on the same day as Meffert's wife, Linda, formed a new company that soon collected a $38,000 check from NetMethods. Eight days after the two companies were created, St. Pierre sought legal advice as to whether he could use NetMethods to pay the Mefferts. Two months later, NetMethods was paying for the Meffert and Nagin families' joint trip to Hawaii.

"If a person owned a corporation and couldn't pay money (to a public official) through that corporation, simply forming a new corporation to pay the money wouldn't suffice" to make it legal, said Julian Murray, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a defense lawyer.

Castaing, St. Pierre's attorney, seemed to offer a new defense strategy at a pre-trial hearing in December, contending that St. Pierre relied on the counsel of attorneys from the firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, as well as another Mississippi lawyer, to determine that NetMethods could ethically pay Greg Meffert and hire his wife.

"Advice of counsel can be a defense if it's reasonably relied upon," Murray said. "That's the catch phrase: It has to be a 'reasonable reliance.' For example, if a person is taking a bribe, he can't go to a lawyer and have the lawyer say that's not a bribe and then go ahead and take it."

During a pre-trial hearing in February, Castaing and prosecutor Matthew Coman both read sections from a Sept. 7, 2004, letter by Baker Donelson attorney Kent Lambert to St. Pierre. St. Pierre got the legal advice on the same day that he opened NetMethods' first bank account with a paltry $1,000. But the full text of the letter has not been made public, and in reading excerpts, Castaing and Coman each put his own spin on Lambert's overall message.

Coman said Lambert advised St. Pierre that paying Meffert would be "improper and problematic." Castaing said Lambert also advised that "good arguments can be made to the contrary."

A similar "reasonable reliance" defense was proffered, at least for a while, in the first local public corruption case after Hurricane Katrina. Former St. Tammany Parish Councilman Joe Impastato eventually pleaded guilty in 2008 to taking kickbacks for steering debris-removal contracts, but not before claiming he was protected by legal advice blessing his role in the disposal deal. Prosecutors later said they had videotape showing Impastato accepting a $10,000 check already made out to attorney Mike Fawer as payment for Fawer's legal opinion.

Fawer, who was not charged with any wrongdoing, is coincidentally the law partner of Meffert's lead attorney, Randy Smith.

During the Impastato prosecution, Coman argued that the advice from Fawer had no legal standing because Impastato hadn't provided Fawer with all the relevant facts. That could be a key issue for St. Pierre's defense, too.

"It's dependent on the lawyers getting all of the pertinent facts," Murray said. "It's not reasonable reliance if the client is leaving out cogent facts."

Just in the past few days, a snarling exchange in court filings over proposed jury instructions offered a prelude of a testy trial focusing on this narrow issue.

Castaing and his co-counsel, Thomas Flanagan, suggested that Judge Eldon Fallon should instruct would-be jurors that attorneys are legally barred from aiding clients in criminal activity and have a responsibility to stop a crime if they learn a client is about to commit one. Prosecutors reacted Thursday with a filing complaining that the defense's proposals "insinuate that Baker Donelson attorneys, as well as another Mississippi attorney, (are) incompetent criminals."

Castaing fired back on Friday, saying a jury could draw the exact opposite conclusion after hearing "anticipated trial testimony" that he said would show St. Pierre's attorneys, "consistent with their ethical duties, would have refused to assist Mr. St. Pierre if they believed that he was engaged in criminal schemes."

David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.