Marty Moss-Coane interview Craig McCoy, one of the Philadelphia Inquirer reporters that broke the original story on Vincent Fumo that resulted in an investigation and yesterday’s guilty verdict in a federal court in Philadelphia yesterday. Also on today’s Radio Times was Eddie Ohlbaum, a professor of law at Temple University who has been following the trial closely.

If you missed the show, you can listen to this Mp3.

If you listen, check out early in the interview the nice summation by Ohlbaum when he said this was a trial a lot about themes. Here’s what he said.

It was a case about themes. I was struck by the defenses theme by the fact that the government was consumed by in their words “venom and vitriol.” And this was a prosecution of guilt by accumulation. Well the jury was able to actually – if you believe them – and the verdict would suggest that they studied the evidence, this accumulation of evidence. And ultimately found that the “venom and vitriol” were called for and the accumulation in their words was an overwhelming amount of evidence. The other point that was interesting was that the senator’s defense was somewhat, uh I think a grab bag of mixed messages. He said first of all. None of this happened. But if it did happen I didn’t know about it. And If I knew about it I worked hard and deserved it, and even if I didn’t deserve it, everybody does it. And I think ultimately the simplification of the prosecution’s presentation which was, this is a very simple case and we have given you overwhelming evidence to support it, I think eventually carried the day.

Related Links:

Eddie Ohlbaum’s Temple University bio page

Craig McCoy’s story on the Fumo verdict

Craig McCoy’s story on comments from jurors after the verdict