Nothing Stolen, Donovan Defense Argues

Closing arguments began Thursday in the seven-month-long grand larceny and fraud trial of former U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan with a defense lawyer charging the case was “like a loony tune, like a circus.”

Theodore V. Wells, lead defense counsel for the 10 defendants, said Stephen Bookin, Bronx assistant district attorney, had used a “different perspective, a twisted perspective” to allege a crime when no law had been broken.

“It’s not the truth, it’s a twisted perspective, and it’s a perspective that resulted in an unjust indictment,” Wells told the jury in the large, dimly lit courtroom in State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

Says No Charges Proved

Wells said prosecutors had proved none of the charges in the 137-count indictment, which was filed in September, 1984, and charges larceny of $7.4 million during construction of a $186-million Manhattan subway tunnel. Before he joined the Reagan Cabinet, Donovan was an executive at a New Jersey construction company building the tunnel.

“These people are innocent,” Wells said. “They didn’t steal any money. They didn’t file any false documents. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“For seven months you’ve been waiting to hear what happened to the $7.4 million that was supposedly stolen,” Wells told the jurors. “You never heard it. That’s because it didn’t happen. Nobody stole any money.”

Wells said the lives of Donovan and his co-defendants had been “destroyed” by the case. And he told the jurors that they were “sitting in the Twilight Zone” because the allegations were “bizarre” and the case was “crazy.”

‘It’s Amazing’

“Nobody has come in here for seven months and said anything bad about these people,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

Donovan, 56, said in an interview that he feels “very good” and is confident of acquittal. He said the prosecutor had tried to “confuse the jury deliberately,” but the strategy had backfired.

“Every witness they put on became our witness,” said Donovan, standing with his wife Kathleen. “It was a strange case that way.”

After Bookin spent seven months presenting the state’s case, defense lawyers rested their case last week without presenting any evidence. Several said that the prosecutor had failed to prove his case and that the jury already had sat long enough.

Prosecutor Declines Comment

Bookin declined comment on Wells’ summation. The prosecutor will deliver his closing argument after Wells. The case is expected to go to the jury late next week.

Wells used detailed charts and a 20-foot-long Plexiglas mock-up of the East 63rd Street subway tunnel to review some of the testimony, 50,000 documents and hundreds of exhibits introduced as evidence in the lengthy trial.

The original indictment charged that Donovan, along with nine former business associates and two construction companies, defrauded the New York City Transit Authority by submitting phony and inflated bills between 1979 and 1984. One defendant was severed from the case, and charges were dropped against another last week.

Involves Minority Firm

Prosecutors said the Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J., used a phony minority business company, Jopel Trucking & Contracting Co., to bilk the Transit Authority of money intended for legitimate minority business contractors. Jopel pretended to rent and operate specialized tunnel-digging equipment that Schiavone actually owned and operated, prosecutors said.

Donovan was executive vice president of the Schiavone company before joining President Reagan’s Cabinet in 1981. Donovan was the first Cabinet secretary to be indicted in office. He resigned in March, 1985, six months after the indictment was filed, and has returned to the construction company.