Case closes as ex-County Councilman McCullough heads to jail
Former Allegheny County Councilman Charles P. McCullough was taken into custody Tuesday morning to begin serving his sentence on theft charges following a sprawling court case dating back over a decade.
He appeared in Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David R. Cashman’s courtroom and was immediately taken into custody but briefly came back to appear in front of the judge for a small reduction of his minimum sentence.
McCullough, 66, was ordered last month to comply with his 2½to 5-year prison sentence after the state Supreme Court declined to hear his final appeal. Judge Cashman dropped the minimum sentence to 22½ months.
The charges stemmed from when McCullough was arrested in 2009 for writing more than $40,000 in checks for political contributions with money taken from an elderly widow he represented.
The woman, Shirley H. Jordan, was a 90-year-old widow of a successful real estate businessman. McCullough was put in charge of her trust in 2006 after she was impressed by his representation of Upper St. Clair during a court battle involving some undeveloped land she owned, court documents read.
Court records say Ms. Jordan’s assets were valued around $14 million while McCullough was serving as her agent and cotrustee. Ms. Jordan died while the case was still ongoing.
During the 2007 municipal elections, McCullough requested four $10,000 checks to be drawn from Ms. Jordan’s checking account and made out to local candidates. Since there was not enough money in the account, funds were taken from the trust that was set up for her.
The large donations, attributed to an elderly woman who
appeared to have little prior interest in politics, caught the attention of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. When the paper interviewed Ms. Jordan about the checks, she said McCullough had taken too much control in her affairs and called him a cheap politician, according to court records.
The story was reported in April 2007, and the political candidates all returned the checks. Also returned was a $10,000 anonymous donation made using the trust’s money to Catholic Charities, where his wife, Patricia McCullough, served as executive director. Patricia McCullough is now a state Commonwealth Court judge and is running for the state Supreme Court.
The case spent years in legal proceedings until 2015, when McCullough was found guilty of five counts of theft and five counts of misapplication of funds during a bench trial before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Lester G. Nauhaus.
McCullough then claimed Judge Nauhaus talked his attorney into having a non-jury trial before the trial began, with the defendant saying he “feared repercussions” if he went against the judge’s request, court documents read.
The former Republican at-large councilman tried to get Judge Nauhaus recused before the sentencing hearing, but he was eventually sentenced by Judge David R. Cashman after Judge Nauhaus left the case for health reasons.
Appealing to the state Superior Court, McCullough said procedural errors, prosecutorial misconduct and a lack of evidence meant he should not have been convicted. A three-judge panel on the court wrote a 60-page opinion finding McCullough’s claims lacked merit, upholding his conviction. The case appeared to be coming to an end after that ruling when Judge Cashman ordered McCullough to serve his prison sentence, but that was delayed when McCullough took the issue to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In February, the state’s highest court denied his appeal, sending McCullough back to Judge Cashman to comply with his prison sentence.
McCullough also faced perjury charges connected to his claim that Judge Nauhaus cajoled his attorney into the bench trial, but those charges were withdrawn by the district attorney’s office Tuesday.