Opinion ID: 482811
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Krear's Inflammatory Summation and References To Pitta

Text: 50 The Trustees contend that they were denied a fair trial because of Krear's inflammatory summation and its repeated references to Vito Pitta, who had recently been indicted on highly publicized charges of involvement with organized crime. We find no abuse of discretion in the court's denial of a new trial on these grounds. 51 The references during the trial to Pitta were hardly gratuitous. They were part of Krear's development of its main theory that the Trustees had breached the Contracts because the political struggle between the International and Local 69 had ended in the International's victory and the merger of Local 69 into Local 6, which was headed by Pitta. For example, Krear's counsel argued that 52 [o]ne of the most critical pieces of evidence in this case is the testimony of Mr. Mozer as to a conversation that he had with Vito Pitta.... 53 [A]ccording to Mr. Mozer's testimony, Mr. Pitta told him ... that the 69 [F]unds were going to be transferred to the International.... 54 The fact that Pitta had recently been indicted in connection with alleged organized crime activities did not preclude the mention of his name in the present case. 55 Nor are we persuaded that the Krear summation was, in light of the record as a whole, unduly prejudicial. The portion of the summation here challenged by the Trustees was as follows: 56 [Y]ou are going to be given the privilege of doing the right thing.... Too often, the people with the wealth and the power to do the right thing, Chicago officials with enormous trust funds, henchmen in New York, ... don't always act with decency and with justice, and according to principles. They crush their political rivals, they destroy the small businesses that try to compete with them. They don't do the right thing, they try to fix things, take care of things. They send lawyers out to make threats ... and they abuse people, they sneer at people, they--[.] 57 At that point, the court interrupted and, in a conference at the bench, admonished Krear's attorney as follows: I have asked the attorneys to use discretion, please. I want you to abide by what I am requesting. No further summation of this type occurred. 58 Although the quoted part of the summation was inflammatory, it did not suffice to warrant granting the Trustees a new trial. Indeed, Krear's summation statements may well have been invited by the Trustees' own intemperate summation, which had argued that Krear, Grauso, and Mozer sought to get rich by taking money out of the pockets of the workers, and that their actions had a bad smell: 59 I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you have a bad smell from this? Was this an arm's-length contract in its inception? Was it performed? Did they know what they were doing, even? Did they care? ... [T]hey want to take Pension and Welfare money out of the pocket[s] of workers and get rich on it. 60 The Trustees' summation was, of course, no excuse for Krear's counsel's improper references to henchmen, threats, fix[ing], and the like. The trial court, however, properly called a swift halt to such invective, and we cannot say that these statements constituted prejudicial error.