Judge who halts Sal DiMasi hearing a former donor

Photo by Herald file

The judge who abruptly pulled the plug yesterday on a hearing over indicted former House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi’s bid to have his state pension restored gave $50 to the disgraced pol’s election campaign in August 1990, the Herald has learned.

DiMasi’s attorney, Thomas R. Kiley, was a character witness for Boston Municipal Court Judge Raymond G. Dougan Jr. when, three months later, in November 1990, Dougan was nominated an associate justice by then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, according to state records.

Dougan, 65, still has DiMasi’s case before him but has postponed it until June 30 so he can confer with BMC Chief Justice Charles Johnson “to determine who is best suited to hear the matter,” said Joan Kenney, state court spokeswoman.

DiMasi, 64, was an assistant Suffolk district attorney in the mid-1970s and later a private attorney who possibly stood before any number of jurists.

The endangered Democrat’s $4,952-per-month retirement allowance has been held up since November while he awaits trial in federal court on mail fraud and conspiracy charges alleging he took $57,000 in bribes from a software company in exchange for state contracts.

DiMasi has pleaded not guilty and claims he needs his pension to pay for his defense and to live.

“I need my retirement allowance to support myself and my family,” he said in court documents. “I had a thriving legal practice until I became speaker but restricted it upon becoming speaker (in 2004) to avoid conflicts and the appearance of conflicts.”

DiMasi resigned his State House seat on Jan. 27, 2009, prior to being indicted. Kiley could not be reached for comment last night.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1261647

Sen. Anthony Galluccio headed back to court

Failed alcohol breath tests

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald

Disgraced state Sen. Anthony D. Galluccio is facing another brush with jail time today after he failed several Breathalyzer tests while under house arrest, blaming the high readings on his toothpaste.

The Cambridge Democrat is being hauled back into court to determine if he should be locked up to serve out his one-year sentence after pleading guilty last week to a hit-and-run crash.

Galluccio, 42, said he flunked several breath tests while in court-ordered home confinement Monday. He blamed the positive readings on his Colgate Total Whitening and Sensodyne toothpaste, which contain the sugar alcohol sorbitol.

“While I knew that mouthwash or cold medicine would set the machine off, it did not occur to me that toothpaste would,” Galluccio said in a statement.

“I am fully committed to sobriety and continuing treatment, and remain focused on serving my constituents,” he said.

Galluccio pleaded guilty Friday to an Oct. 4 hit-and-run in Cambridge that left a father and his 13-year-old son injured.

The two-time drunken driving offender was sentenced to six months of home confinement, and he was ordered by Judge Matthew Nestor to not touch a drop of booze. He was also required to submit to random alcohol testing, surrender his license for five years and pay a $1,000 fine. He was placed on probation for two years but was being allowed to attend formal Senate sessions and Sunday Mass.

Probation spokesman Coria Holland said last night Galluccio has been ordered back to Cambridge District Court in Medford today for a detention hearing.

Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz, whose office prosecuted the case, said last night Galluccio should have been tossed in jail in the first place. Cruz sought a year sentence with six months served in jail.

“He hurt two people. He should be held accountable for that,” Cruz said. “It doesn’t matter who you are. You should be held accountable.”

A spokeswoman for Senate President Therese Murray said, “We expect Sen. Galluccio to comply with the terms of his probation.” Galluccio earns $61,400 as a state senator. He has stepped down from legislative chairmanships that paid him additional stipends.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1220665

Anthony Galluccio laps up wrist slap
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Therese Murray warns Anthony Galluccio of murky Senate future
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Cops: By the way, we gave Galluccio a lift Police finally admit to driving Galluccio home

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald

Cambridge cops kept secret for a month the fact that they had driven home a state senator after responding to a report of an intoxicated man just hours before the lawmaker slammed his SUV into a minivan and fled, raising questions of a cover-up.

It was 25 days after an Oct. 4 hit-and-run wreck allegedly involving Sen. Anthony D. Galluccio when cops finally wrote up a report on the free ride.

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Anthony Galluccio laps up wrist slap

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald

So Christmas comes a week early for state Sen. Anthony D. (for Drunkard) Galluccio.

After his latest brush with a bad ice cube, the besotted solon gets . . . home confinement. Nice. Most guys jammed up as often as Galluccio would have gotten confinement in a new home, namely, the House of Correction.

This bum should be bunking with John Buonomo in Billerica, instead he’s telling reporters, “I’m going to open my home to constituents.”

The only problem is, sometimes when he’s got a load on he forgets where he lives. But you’ll be able to spot his house easily enough. It’s the one with the swinging doors.

“I have made a firm decision that there will be no alcohol in my life.”

Are you aware, Senator, that beer is in fact alcohol?

If I ever get in a jam, I don’t ask for any special favors. Just treat me like Sen. Galluccio.

There’s an old saying in the military that sums up this squalid case: “different spanks for different ranks.” I don’t so much blame the judge – Galluccio has been pardoned for two OUIs, and the clerk/magistrate in Boston broomed his demolition derby caper in the Back Bay. And of course, he ran away from his latest crash and hid long enough to make a Breathalyzer immaterial.

But still, the fact is, a lot of guys have done a lot less behind the wheel – and haven’t sent anyone to the ER – and they still ended up doing six months in Plymouth, or Dedham or Deer Island. They lost their licenses, their jobs, their families.

Galluccio gets a Dianne Wilkerson sentence, as they say at the State House. Hell, even Dianne had to go to a halfway house.

And Galluccio has the audacity to say, “I cannot overstate my regret for the decision I made that day.”

Give me a break. Not sticking around for the field-sobriety test – the sidewalk Olympics – was the best move he ever made, and he knows it. And where were the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) outside the courtroom?

I know, the apologists will be out in force. They’ll say he has a problem. Actually, the real problem belongs to the drivers who are on the road with him. And supposedly he loses his driver’s license for five years.

Yeah, right, just like Judge McEvoy supposedly had her license pulled for six months after her OUI. Four days later, she was tooling around Belmont. Another one of those “hardship licenses” . . .

Senator, to ask the question from the old song, was it the high cost of living, or the cost of living high?

Anyone can get into trouble once. As Rudyard Kipling wrote, there comes a night when the best gets tight. But when it happens over and over and over again, the phrase the cops use is “habitual offender.” As they say at the academy, it’s a trend as opposed to an anomaly.

This guy is acting like his last name is Kennedy. The only thing missing from yesterday’s sob story was a claim that he was on his way to a vote at the State House.

“This experience,” he blubbered, “has been a life-altering one for me.”

No it hasn’t. Six months in the House of Correction – that’s life-altering. This is a broom.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1219877

Sen. Anthony Galluccio headed back to court
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Therese Murray warns Anthony Galluccio of murky Senate future
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Fellow cons have had fill of pampered pol Anthony Galluccio

Photo by Herald file

Disgraced ex-Sen. Anthony Galluccio, how do you like that beige jumpsuit you’ll be wearing for the next nine or 10 months at the Billerica House of Correction?

Enough already with this dreadful health-care fiasco. Let’s get back to more amusing topics, like a perennially overserved hack doing a year in the county jail for what amounts to open and gross drunkenness.

You remember the story. Time after time, the drunk Democrat got away with boozy accidents – he refused Breathalyzer tests, drove off after rear-ending a car, got a ride home from the Cambridge cops even though he forgot where he lived. Once he even got a pardon from his fellow Cambridge tosspot, Gov. William F. Weld. But Galluccio finally got locked up after he was caught drinking while under house arrest.

The statesman claimed he was framed by a tube of bad tooth paste. He was Arm & Hammered. It’s a scandal, and every scandal’s name has to end in -gate. Call this one Colgate.

Now I hold in my hand a letter from the solon’s new home, the House of Correction. It’s from “Concerned Irish Con” who is in the same substance-abuse unit, Pod A, as Galluccio.

“He’s still trying to convince people it was 80-proof toothpaste.”

Do you think Galluccio is in denial? “He is out of his cell more than anyone else, always on the phone – he must think he’s campaigning.”

At this point a call was placed to the warden – Middlesex Sheriff James DiPaola. He said Galluccio can make as many calls as he has money in his campaign, er canteen, fund to pay for. Remember, Galluccio’s mom and sister held a fund-raiser for the ex-mayor of Cambridge. And given the jail rates – $3 per call, plus 10 cents a minute – they’d better throw him another one soon.

Back to the anonymous letter:

“He gets special meals from the chow hall. Shrink wrapped with his name on it.”

Couldn’t confirm that one with the sheriff – apparently it’s privileged information. But 140 of the 900 inmates at Billerica get special meals, so it’s likely Galluccio is one of them. Not that special food means much to the ex-solon, unless he could score some rum cake.

“This (bleep) thinks he’s better than us convicts but he wears a jumpsuit just like us. He’s gone from a senator to a janitor. Cleans showers.”

All very interesting, Concerned, but what about me?

“He talks (bleep) about you, says you’re a scumbag and a loser but I don’t think you have any DUIs.”

That is correct, sir.

“He’s trying to get out on bail while awaiting his appeal. Get the kids off the street. I hate seeing this kiss-(bleep) getting special treatment.”

The sheriff says nobody’s getting any special treatment. No more Harvey’s Bristol Gleem for Mistah Chairman.

By the way, Galluccio’s roommate is not John Buonomo, the sticky-fingered ex-register of probate in Middlesex county. Buonomo works in the jail kitchen, and no, he doesn’t get to count the change from the vending machines.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1241955

Pol nabbed on New Hampshire booze run

A Westport lawmaker who voted to hike the state sales and alcohol taxes was spotted brazenly piling booze in his car – adorned with his State House license plate – in the parking lot of a tax-free New Hampshire liquor store, the Herald has learned.

Michael J. Rodrigues’ blue Ford Crown Victoria, emblazoned with his “House 29” Massachusetts license plate, was parked outside a Granite State liquor store on Interstate-95 South over the weekend, according to a witness who provided pictures to the Herald.

The witness, who requested anonymity, claimed he approached Rodrigues, noted his State House plate, and asked if he was on personal or official business. Rodrigues, who was loading booze into his car, snapped “mind your own business,” the witness said.

The witness’ account was also posted yesterday on Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Web site.

A member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Rodrigues did not return several phone calls yesterday. But in an online interview with The Standard-Times in New Bedford, he acknowledged buying the booze during a bathroom stop while he and his wife were on a weekend getaway in New Hampshire.

He also blamed the brouhaha on “Republican demagoguery.”

“Unfortunately, I think that’s why the Republican Party is in such bad shape in Massachusetts,” Rodrigues is quoted as saying. “The electorate here is smart enough to figure out what they’re up to.”

The Westport Democrat, whose family owns a rug business, was among the lawmakers who voted in an unpopular 25 percent sales tax hike for Bay Staters. The increase pushed the sales tax to 6.25 percent and slapped that same levy on booze – the first time alcohol has been subject to retail sales tax.

The hike has been blasted by business owners, especially those on the New Hampshire border, who say the increase has driven business north.

Mike Cimini, owner of Yankee Spirits liquor stores in Sturbridge, Attleboro and Swansea, said he’s lost about 10 percent of his business since the booze tax went into effect Aug. 1.

“It’s absolutely unbelievable that a Massachusetts state representative would be that hypocritical, let alone be that bold to actually drive his car with political plates to a New Hampshire liquor store,” said Cimini, noting Rodrigues represents communities close to his stores. “He’s up in New Hampshire to avoid the very taxes he approved.”

State law prohibits transporting more than 20 gallons of malt beverages or three gallons of any other alcoholic beverage. Police have the authority to detain and charge anyone illegally importing booze into the state. It’s unknown how much Rodrigues purchased at the New Hampshire store.

Authorities have also cracked down at the border, targeting Bay Staters seeking to avoid paying state taxes by crossing into New Hampshire to shop.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1194791

Salvatore DiMasi faces fraud rap

Photo by Angela Rowlings

Ex-Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi is facing up to 20 years in prison for allegedly taking kickbacks in yet another State House corruption scandal that has cast a pall over Beacon Hill and sent the onetime iron-fisted leader’s former colleagues scrambling for cover.

DiMasi was hit with fraud and conspiracy charges yesterday in a scathing indictment that painted him as the “coach” of a team of conspirators who cut lucrative deals in backrooms and on golf courses from Boston to Florida, lining his own pocket to the tune of $60,000, federal agents alleged.

Prosecutors said DiMasi used his legislative might to steer $20 million in taxpayer-funded software contracts to Cognos in 2007. In exchange, the Canadian firm funneled payments to an unnamed lawyer in DiMasi’s law office, who in turn cut the then-speaker checks ranging from $4,000 to $25,000, authorities alleged.

At one point during the alleged scheme, DiMasi boasted to a pal, “It’s about time we got business like this,” according to acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks.

Also charged yesterday were DiMasi’s friend and former accountant Richard Vitale, Cognos lobbyist Richard McDonough and former Cognos executive Joseph Lally Jr. All four were released on $10,000 surety and are due back in federal court Monday.

DiMasi, who became the third consecutive speaker to land in the defendant’s chair in federal court, had tears in his eyes as he addressed a crush of media outside Moakley Federal Courthouse.

“Every decision that I have ever made as the speaker or as a state representative was always made in the best interests of my constituents and the people of the commonwealth of Massachusetts,” DiMasi said, clutching the hand of his wife, Debbie. He brushed off media questions and left in a black Jaguar driven by his lawyer.

Meanwhile, Speaker Robert DeLeo, a longtime DiMasi ally, and his leadership team went into bunker mode yesterday. They discussed beefing up ethics rules in a bid to rebuild shattered public trust, including giving in to a proposal by Gov. Deval Patrick to ban gifts to politicians and give prosecutors power to tap crooked lawmakers’ phones, sources said.

One lawmaker said news of DiMasi’s indictment “sucked all the air out of the room” during the DeLeo leadership meeting.

DeLeo, who oversaw the key legislative committee that ushered through the Cognos legislation, said he was “saddened and disappointed” by the charges.

His attorney, Robert Popeo, sought to distance the speaker from the scandal, saying he has fully complied with investigators.

“He is not a subject, target or person of interest in any of the investigation that is taking place,” Popeo said. “People from his office produced records (to the grand jury). He was never in front of the grand jury.”

Patrick last night said the indictment was “deeply disturbing,” while one lawmaker called the charges “a huge distraction and a huge blow to the House.”

DiMasi’s indictment comes just two years after former Speaker Thomas M. Finneran was convicted of obstruction of justice and was put on 18 months’ probation. Finneran’s predecessor, Charles Flaherty, resigned from the Legislature in 1996 after pleading guilty to tax evasion and ethics violations. It also comes months after former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson was charged with taking bribes.

McDonough’s attorney, Thomas Drechsler, proclaimed his client’s innocence and called the allegations “an attack on the lobbying profession.”

“What he is accused of is doing what he has done honorably and honestly for over 30 years and that is to lobby on behalf of his client,” Drechsler said. “He advocated for language in legislation. That’s what lobbyists are paid to do.”

Edward Mason contributed to this report.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1176446

Not a fan, felonious Tom Finneran? Well pardon me!

Photo by Nancy Lane

Are you talkin’ to me, Felon Finneran?

I quote now from the letter that four bust-out ex-governors of Massachusetts have written to President Bush, begging them to pardon former House speaker Tommy Taxes Finneran, a man so crooked he needs a corkscrew to get into his pants in the morning.

“He has suffered daily taunts and ridicule of those who believe that every elected official is the equivalent of a common thief.”

That’s me they’re talking about. When it comes to Felon Finneran, I’m in charge of daily taunts and ridicule. But despite what the Four Stooges wrote, I don’t believe every elected official is a thief. Finneran, on the other hand, was the House speaker – a job title that lately has a higher recidivism rate than godfather of the Gambino Crime Family.

As for Tommy Taxes being a “common thief” – I would never say that. Common thieves who do the crime do the time. Finneran committed multiple counts of perjury in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, but was convicted of one count of obstruction of justice, and didn’t do an hour, let alone a day, in durance vile.

And he still refuses to take responsibility for his sordid life of crime. So far, he’s Alibi Ike.

First excuse: he lied under oath because he was in a hurry to drive his wife to Mass General.

Second excuse: he’d been “gulping” Advil. No joke – Tommy Taxes claimed he was “Advil-addled.”

New excuse: I’ve ruined everything for him. Yeah, and tonight I’m going to make it snow.

The Four Stooges said Felon Finneran has been “severely punished.” Really? He’s still making big money for his wretched radio show, which we call “Sweet Sixteen,” because that’s generally about where it finishes in the ratings. The Felon usually runs neck and neck with “The River,” and sometimes he even edges the Manchester N.H. soft-rock station. Sometimes. His show is so compelling it now goes off the air at 9 instead of 10, and they’re trying to prop him up with a co-host.

Finneran should be breakin’ rocks in the hot sun. He fought the law and the law won. Although I still remember the day he was “sentenced,” and how Judge Rick Stearns was almost apologizing for having to ask him the questions every convicted felon has to answer.

Are you on drugs this morning, wiseguy? You do know you can’t own a firearm anymore, maggot. But no, it was all “Mistah Speakah” this and “I know this is a silly question but . . .” I was there in the courtroom hoping to make a victim-impact statement. See, I was at the courthouse the day Felon Finneran told his string of incredible whoppers about his racist gerrymandering scheme in the city of Boston.

I was shocked, shocked, I tell you. I tried not to let it destroy my faith in the integrity of the Massachusetts Legislature. But I can’t get over it. Then last year, the Felon speculated to Gov. Patrick that I should be taken for a one-way ride in the trunk of the governor’s Coupe Deval.

You can take the felon out of the State House, but you can’t take the State House out of the felon. President Bush, don’t enough people hate you already? You don’t need your own Marc Rich.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1144332

Tom Finneran Felon Finneran

Former House speaker Thomas M. Finneran, arriving at his Mattapan home Monday. (Globe Staff Photo / Justine Hunt)
The Boston Globe

Finneran’s gathering storm

Ex-speaker’s strongest traits may have hastened his fall

By Don Aucoin, Globe Staff | June 9, 2005

It was a spring night in 2001, and the hottest question on Beacon Hill was whether the state budget proposal about to be released by the House Ways and Means Committee would contain adequate funds for the Clean Elections Law.

The law to provide public financing of campaigns had been overwhelmingly approved by voters several years earlier, but House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran had made no secret of his hostility to it, and that had spelled doom for many a measure in the State House over the years.

That made Finneran’s response all the more surprising when a reporter asked how much money would be in the Ways and Means budget for Clean Elections. ”I literally have no idea,” Finneran said. He went on to explain that he had been so busy with other legislative matters that he had left it in the hands of Ways and Means chairman John Rogers.

The notion of a hands-off approach on something Finneran cared about so deeply ran counter to everything that was known about the controlling, detail-oriented man who ran the House. But for the eight years Finneran presided as a speaker of unchallenged power, he seldom felt the need to agonize over his words or his image. Indeed, he was every inch the happy warrior, a sharp-tongued figure who freely expressed his opinions.

Yet in the aftermath of his indictment Monday on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, some wonder whether the very traits that propelled Finneran’s rise to power — a self-confidence bordering on the cocksure, a reflexive refusal to yield on points large or small, an eager appetite for political combat — may have worked together to hasten his fall.

”Hubris,” said Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, speculating on why Finneran denied any involvement in the redistricting process. ”There would have been no consequences to him had he told the truth: ‘Yes, I met with lawmakers and talked about this; yes, I met with the chairman of the committee.’ There would have been no repercussions. People would have said, ‘Look, there’s Finneran controlling the process again, but that would been, ‘Yawn, yawn, what’s new?’ ”

Finneran has vigorously maintained his innocence. Moreover, he has done so with the unambiguous force that characterized his eight years as House speaker, issuing a statement saying, ”My response to the charges brought against me today is NOT GUILTY,” and telling reporters: ”I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

If that is true, that would mean Finneran is less bothered by the indictment than are some of his admirers. Former House speaker David Bartley contended that the indictment is ”just outrageous,” and that Finneran is called arrogant simply for exerting strong leadership and for being unyielding in his beliefs.

Such support is a testament to the charisma and brainpower Finneran brought to the post of House speaker, along with an iron-fisted approach that made dissidents an endangered species. Critics say Finneran’s belief that he was smarter than most — an opinion honed and to an extent affirmed in the State House — contributed to his current legal predicament. In this view, the commanding — critics called it arrogant — demeanor that defined his leadership in the House simply boomeranged on the witness stand.

”He was just daring the attorneys to challenge him, to doubt him,” remarked Representative James J. Marzilli, a Democrat from Arlington who was often at loggerheads with Finneran during the decade-plus they served together in the House. ”You carry that outside this chamber, this institution, and people are a lot less willing to live by the rules he’s trying to force upon them.”

His will was so fierce, his talents so outsized, that Finneran grew used to getting his way on Beacon Hill. Often, his word literally was law. Now a jury will decide whether he broke the law with a few words of emphatic denial when he was asked, under oath, whether he knew the contents of a legislative redistricting plan before it was made public.

Lou DiNatale, director of the Center for Economic and Civic Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, said it was clear from the former speaker’s testimony that he found it ”outrageous he had to testify before a federal jury over something that speakers have done over time immemorial in every state in the country . . . to protect his party members, Democrats, and his leadership. He made a mistake. He assumed this wasn’t going to be as explosive a public issue as it became.”

Whatever the outcome, the indictment has refocused the spotlight on a figure as compelling as he is contradictory. Finneran is a student of history who loves Edward Gibbon’s ”The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and Winston Churchill’s ”The Gathering Storm,” but he didn’t seem to see the storm gathering around him or to apprehend that his own pride and power might lead to a fall. In interviews with admirers and detractors of the former speaker, it was striking how often the twin themes of ambition and tragedy were sounded.

”Tom Finneran thought he was going to be either mayor of Boston or a United States senator,” said John McDonough, a former legislator and now executive director of Health Care for All, a consumer advocacy group. ”He clearly saw the speakership not as a terminal position but as a launching pad for something bigger. Given his ambitions, there’s a note of tragedy in it, that someone so gifted and talented was not able to capitalize on his position to achieve that bigger goal.”

Barbara Anderson, head of Citizens for Limited Taxation, considered Finneran to have ”a very thin skin stretched over a very big ego” from the day in 1991 when he ignored her outstretched hand and stalked away from her after the two did battle over Proposition 2 1/2, the tax-limiting measure that was her brainchild. Nonetheless, Anderson said, she now views Finneran as ”a tragic figure who had tremendous potential for leadership but instead he got lost in his own hubris.”

Over time, Finneran became known for what he said as much as for what he did. In the middle of the 1998 debate over how much public financing should be given to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to build a new stadium, Finneran at a dinner in Peabody dismissed the idea of a tax break for the project with a vulgarity.

In 1998, at a post-primary unity breakfast after Scott Harshbarger had won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, the facade of unity crumbled in a hurry when Finneran floated the notion that Harshbarger might drift toward ”the loony left,” a blow to a nominee who hoped and needed to appeal to moderate voters.

But for all of his swagger, the depictions of Finneran as a cartoon tyrant miss the mark, insist many who served with him, including some who lined up against him on issues or on leadership style. Most describe a man who was unfailingly cordial, who invariably recalled the names of members’ spouses and children, and who would blink back tears while discussing the challenges facing the mentally retarded.

Representative Michael Festa, a Melrose Democrat who emerged as one of Finneran’s leading critics, said, ”It’s a rare member of the House that would say they didn’t like Tom Finneran.”

Even though Festa often spoke out against Finneran’s tight control of the House, the two enjoyed a friendly relationship based on a shared love of gardening, and Festa had Finneran and his wife as a guest at his house several times. ”The man is sufficiently complex for everyone to understand he’s not that one-dimensional as a person,” Festa said.

Yet the image that came through to the outside world sometimes lacked those other dimensions. Having entered the Legislature in his late 20s, Finneran perhaps inevitably leaned on the instincts and style of a State House insider. But that very style may have worked against him on the witness stand, in the view of DiNatale, who believes that the indictment is unfair.

”Finneran got popped for the wink and the nod,” DiNatale contended. ”Because the culture of the [State House] building is ‘I know and you don’t know what’s really going on,’ the wink and the nod is the dominant form of being in the know. . . . You can play these winking games with the press, you can even play them with the Legislature. You can’t play them under oath.”

Rick Klein and Jonathan Saltzman of the Globe staff contributed to this report.