Jurors seated for James' corruption trial, which judge says could last three months

NEWARK - Lawyers for former Newark Mayor Sharpe James and Tamika Riley fought back in federal court today against depictions of their clients as intertwining strands of corruption in a fraud case the feds say James and Riley perpetrated against the people of Newark's struggling South Ward. 

Arguing on behalf of James, 72, defense attorney Tom Ashley said it was a Newark City Council top-heavy with James detractors, including the mayor's arch-nemesis Cory Booker, that repeatedly affirmed the sale of city properties to Riley.

"He's charged with unduly influencing the (Department of Economic Housing Development) on behalf of his girlfriend," Ashley told 19 jurors in the federal courtroom of District Judge William Martini on Monday afternoon. "There is no evidence, and we will fight it to the last day."

Whatever the jury's view of the married James having an alleged extramarital affair with Riley, 38, of Jersey City, "He committed no crime," said Ashley. "He improperly influenced no one."

The attorney reminded the jurors that the 1967 riots devastated the South Ward and sent people scattering out of the city, abandoning buildings; and it was James, who once represented the ward as a councilman, who shouldered the job of again standing up the South Ward, creating affordable housing and repopulating the neighborhoods, which he did, by Ashley's reckoning.

"The alleged relationship with Tamika Riley will not destroy his legacy," the attorney proclaimed.   

Trying to take apart the government's case that former Fashion Dome owner Riley was unqualified to rehabilitate properties as part of the South Ward Redevelopment Plan run by the city's Department of Economic and Housing Development, Riley's attorney, Gerald Krovatin, presented his client as a known quantity in Newark based on her several years of work not only in fashion but as the public relations brain behind some big events.

Krovatin argued that she was "as qualified as anyone."

His client met the mayor in 1999 while representing Boston Celtics basketball player Eric Williams, a Newark native who at the pinnacle of his success expressed an interest in helping out the South Ward but who fast grew weary, said the lawyer. 

"Eric Williams decided it was more important to concentrate on his jumpshot than development," explained Krovatin, and when the pro basketball player's interest in Newark waned, Riley saw an opportunity and reached out to the city's Department of Economic and Housing Development. 

Ultimately, after securing successful transactions with the city, "She didn't give him (James) any money from the sales of properties and the government doesn't even allege that," said Krovatin, who said the dollars Riley made from the sales were considerably less than the gross figure presented by the government, and that they went toward the payment of loans, including a car loan.  

"You will see that Tamika Riley was not so good with money," said Krovatin, "but she was good with her friends. If you were here friend, and she had it, you had it."

He admitted James and Riley had a romantic affair that lasted from April or May of 2002 until November of 2002, but pointed out that years after their relationship had ended, Riley was nursing those professional contacts she had forged with the City Council to continue to purchase city property. 

"The relationship, such as it was," said Krovatin, "had nothing to do with her acquiring the properties." 

Krovatin also alerted the jury to what he said was the reason why Riley lived in Section 8 housing, which he said was because she cared for two of her sisters' children, who otherwise faced the prospect of foster care.

Prior to the counter arguments made by the defense, the prosecution strove to portray James as a callous Lothario who used his office illegally to steer nine land parcels into the arms of his girlfriend, when he should have been supporting the South Ward Redevelopment Plan's core mission: the conversion of abandoned and rundown buildings into fair market housing for low and moderate income people.

Riley, Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Kwon argued, had no expertise as a real estate developer, did not rehabilitate the bulk of the properties she purchased, and heaped at least one lavish and unreported gift on the mayor.

"What they did in their personal lives is their business," Kwon said of Riley and James, who served as mayor of Newark from 1986 to 2006. "But he had a duty to disclose the nature of that relationship and to recuse himself from any business investments (involving Riley)."

Kwon told the jury that James had once said real estate is a municipality's "greatest treasure."

"We will show that James jealously guarded that treasure," said Kwon, even going so far as to write a law as a state senator enabling himself as mayor to wield more power over the distribution of land parcels as part of the city's South Ward redevelopment plan.

Kwon maintained that Riley paid the city a total of $46,000 for the nine properties, then turned around and sold them to make $665,000, while in the process fixing only two of those properties and falsely claiming to rehabilitate the other seven using a workforce of homeless men and women.

In the months that James lobbied on her behalf in the city's Department of Economic and Housing Development and she secured the Newark City Council's approval to buy the properties, Riley was also traveling with the mayor on high-priced trips to the Dominican Republic and languishing on James' boat or at his shore house, Kwon said. One of the setpieces of the assistant U.S. Attorney's presentation involved Riley's gift to the mayor in 2002 of $4,300-worth of tickets for the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson heavyweight championship fight in Memphis, TN, and a same day limo ride for James and his friends worth $900.

With his client facing Judge Martini, Ashley gave the opening argument for James; followed by Krovatin, who made the case for Riley, who faced the jury throughout the afternoon proceeding.

"The government wants you to believe she got whatever she wanted," Ashley said. "Its simply not true." 

The defense attorney said Riley paid the same price per parcel of property that other developers paid who participated in the program. Moreover, it was the city council and not James who approved of her as a participant in the South Ward Redevelopment Plan. This was the same City Council that had sued James and fought him as a matter of course, where free thinkers Booker and the late Councilman Donald Tucker occupied chairs of power, men who would have bristled at the suggestion that they were rubber stamp James facilitators.

Krovatin fleshed out that latter idea, saying his client was an "impact player" in Newark, who had been the public relations muscle behind successful appearances in the city by Ja Rule, Bow Wow, Isaac Hayes and Winnie Mandela, among others. The council knew her and respected her, and had on one occasion - independent of James, he said -authored a council resolution commending Tamika Riley Incorporated. In short, the lawyer said, those independent voices on the council backed Riley not because James was manipulating them, but because they liked and trusted Riley.

She made things happen, created excitement and good energy.

Krovatin forewarned the jury that they would likely be hearing a lot about the boxing tickets, which he hinted would be part of the government's effort to draw a link between his client's collection of money and a consequent monetary reward for James.

The lawyer said after Isaac Hayes' pre-Mother's Day appearance in Symphony Hall, which Riley personally arranged as one of her Newark happenings, the king of 1970s groove mentioned he might be interested in opening a restaurant in Newark. Riley subsequently went to Hayes' house in Memphis where she hoped to work a deal with him. The mayor's bait down there was the Lewis-Tyson match; and yet, according to her attorney, Riley's business eye was all the while on Hayes and Newark, though apparently that deal fell apart at one point.   

After the opening arguments, Martini told the jury court would resume at 9:30 Tuesday morning.

Facing numerous public corruption charges, James turned himself in to the FBI in July of last year. According to the feds, the former mayor in part stands accused of allegedly facilitating and approving the "drastically cut-rate sale of city-owned land to (Riley), one of his companions, who fraudulently reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sales. She too is charged with this fraud in the indictment."

In the audience throughout much of the day watching the trial unfold, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie appeared to catch James' eye at one pont when the former mayor returned from the 4th floor hallway to Martini's courtroom.

"Sharpe," said Christie in greeting, as James strode wordlessly past.