Donovan’s Lawyer Urges Dismissal : Says Prosecutors of Ex-Labor Secretary ‘Invented Evidence’

After seven grueling months of trial, Raymond J. Donovan’s lawyer pleaded with a New York state judge Thursday to dismiss all larceny and fraud charges against the former U.S. labor secretary before the case goes to the jury.

Donovan’s lawyer, William O. Bittman, said prosecutors had “invented evidence” but had failed to prove any of the 137 counts charged in the September, 1984, indictment against Donovan and his eight co-defendants.

“Absolutely nothing by any stretch of the imagination could be construed as incriminating evidence against Mr. Donovan,” Bittman said in an hour-long argument to dismiss charges before State Supreme Court Judge John P. Collins.

Confident of Acquittal

Even if the judge does not dismiss the charges, the 11 defense attorneys are so confident their clients will be acquitted that, instead of putting on a defense, they may simply make their closing arguments and let the case go to the jury. Collins said he will rule on their motion on April 21.

When jury selection began last Sept. 2, Collins said he expected the trial to take about three months. But the prosecution case alone lasted 32 weeks, with 102 court days, 39 witnesses, 32 wiretap tapes, and an estimated 50,000 documents entered into evidence. Defense costs, several lawyers estimated, will reach $10 million.

In an interview outside the sixth-floor courtroom, Donovan said the prosecution case took so many months because “it takes a long time to prove a crime when one hasn’t been committed.”

Alternately reflective and angry, Donovan said he has been deeply affected by wandering the halls and talking to other defendants in the giant graffiti-covered courthouse, which sits near burned-out tenements in the South Bronx, one of the nation’s poorest communities.

‘Opened My Eyes’

“I learned a lot walking through this courthouse for seven months,” Donovan said. “And I’ve changed. . . . It has opened my eyes.”

“For the past six years, so much harm has been done emotionally and financially,” Donovan added. “That can never be recouped. Justice will never be done. Life is unfair, and I’m going to do something to make it fairer.”

Donovan, who attended a seminary before becoming a wealthy New Jersey construction executive, said he did not know what he would do. But he added bitterly that prosecutors were after “victory,” not “truth or justice.” Their goal, he said, is “to hang Ray Donovan’s pelt on the wall.”

In a separate interview, Assistant Dist. Atty. Stephen R. Bookin declined comment on Donovan’s charge. Asked about the trial’s duration, Bookin blamed defense lawyers for delays by extensive cross-examination of witnesses and lengthy legal arguments.

Arguments by Defense

“Every piece of evidence, every witness, every tape, every document was argued by the defense,” he said. “That went on as long as the testimony.”

Donovan, 56, resigned as President Reagan’s labor secretary in March, 1985, six months after he had become the first sitting Cabinet officer to be indicted in office.

The indictment charged Donovan and the other defendants with defrauding the New York City Transit Authority of $7.4 million in a $186-million construction contract for the East 63rd Street subway tunnel in Manhattan. Prosecutors said the scheme hinged on payments that were supposedly made to a fake minority business subcontractor but were actually pocketed by Donovan’s firm, the Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J.

But defense lawyers said Thursday that Bookin had not presented sufficient evidence to prove larceny or fraud as charged in the indictment.

Napping in Court

“The biggest surprise was that he didn’t even have one witness to support his case in seven months,” said lead defense lawyer Theodore Wells.

The lengthy trial has involved hundreds of hours of tedious testimony, detailed charts and graphs, tens of thousands of financial documents, and 17,000 pages of transcripts. Napping was common in court. At one point, the jurors applauded when a prosecution witness, Schiavone controller Gregory Vassel, finally stepped down after testifying for 22 days.

“You can imagine what kind of purgatory it is to have to sit there every day with your hands on your knees for so long,” said defense lawyer Theodore Geiser. “It’s like a pillory.”

“It’s the most boring trial in the history of the world,” another attorney said.

32 Wiretap Tapes

Much of the prosecution case centered on 32 wiretap tapes made by the FBI in 1979 at a Bronx meatpacking plant run by William (Willy the Butcher) Masselli, a co-defendant in the Donovan case. Law enforcement authorities have identified Masselli as an organized crime figure, and he is awaiting a separate trial on murder charges.

In an interview, Masselli said he was confident of acquittal even though “half the jurors slept through the trial. All they heard was figures, figures, figures. Who could understand it?”

But his lawyer, John N. Iannuzzi, complained that prosecutors played a tape of “traditional Neapolitan songs” by Luciano Pavarotti, the renowned Italian tenor, to separate different wiretap recordings. He said the tape was a deliberate attempt to smear the defendants.