Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Judge upholds Como guilty verdict
Attorney for ex-CASD superintendent had requested a new trial
A motion seeking a new trial for disgraced former Coatesville Area School District Superintendent Richard Como has been denied by the Common Pleas Court judge who oversaw the three-plus year span of the criminal case against him involving theft of school funds to pay for gaudy rings for people associated with the high school’s football team.
Senior Judge Thomas G. Gavin, who presided over both of Como’s
trials on charges of theft and conflict of interest said in his 10-page opinion and order that Como’s request to throw out his conviction and be retried did not meet the state’s standards for overturning a jury’s verdict post-trial.
To do so, the finding of guilt in Como’s case would have had to be so outrageous that it would “shock one’s sense of justice,” according to case law.
Como, though his attorney Christian Hoey of Paoli, had argued that the verdict of guilty was against the weight of the evidence that had been produced by the prosecution at trial. Instead of acting criminally, he argued, Como had been doing his best to provide students at the school with tokens of pride normally given to athletes who win a championship.
But Gavin said that Como’s behavior had been to arrange the purchase of the rings not through normal procedures, but under the cloak of subterfuge and obfuscation.
“Mementos have a cost, and that was (Como’s undoing) as there was no existing budget to pay for the rings and the means used by the defendant to cover their cost were not just unorthodox, they were criminal,” the judge wrote. “If everything was above board, why all the Machiavellian intrigue of … disguising what was being done?
“The fact that the jury believed the Commonwealth’s evidence does not shock my conscience in the least,” Gavin wrote in his opinion, filed May 11. “When each action (Como) took or directed to be taken is looked at in the context of everything else that was occurring, the conclusion that things were intentionally being done opaquely is inescapable.”
Hoey last week confirmed that his client would now appeal the conviction to the state Superior Court. He remains free on bail pending the completion of his appeal. He faces a prison term of three to 23 months in Chester County Prison and three years of subsequent probation, during all of which time he is prohibited from setting foot on school district property or attending school athletic functions.
Como, who stepped down from his position in 2013 just before a scandal broke in the district over racist text messages he exchanged with a member of his administration, was found guilty of dealing in unlawful proceeds, theft by failure to make required disposition of funds, theft by unlawful taking, and conflict of interest. In addition to the ring purchase scheme, he also was found guilty of charges that he improperly arranged to get his son a job as a custodial supervisor with the district, and manipulated the sale to the district of an electric generator he owned.
Como, 71, of West Brandywine, was acquitted on charges of theft and receiving stolen property related to accusations that he filed false expense reports for reimbursement with the district for trips and meals during his tenure.
The prosecution had contended during the eightday-long trial that Como had used his position of authority in the district to engineer the building of a “slush fund” that was used to purchase commemorative rings for not only members of the 2012 championship Red Raiders football team, but also himself, coaches, friends and wives – all without approval from the Coatesville Area School Board.
Those funds he gathered, said Assistant District Attorney Andrea Cardamone in her closing argument to the jury on Thursday, were not his to maneuver through various accounts, but rather belonged to the students of the district, or to the district itself. When Como took the money without permission from those who it rightly belonged to, even if it did not go into his pocket directly, “That’s theft,” she said.
The charges against Como were announced in dramatic fashion by a Chester County Grand Jury presentment in December 2014, 16 months after Como had stepped down from the position he had held in the Coatesville school system since 2005. Although Como was one of only two people charged criminally in the 114-page document, the presentment took aim not only at him, but the district solicitor at the time and the school board members who were serving in 2013, when many of the events occurred.
The reasons for his departure from the district he had called home as an educator since the 1980s were never discussed during the trial, but stemmed from the discovery of racially charged text messages he had exchanged with the district’s then-athletic director, James Donato III. In them, the pair used common, vulgar epithets to refer to black and Latino staff members, and black students.