Curious hospital vote arises in Rezko trial

In blow-by-blow detail, a prosecution witness in the trial of Antoin Rezko Tuesday described a bizarre display of whispering on stage and conferences in the middle of a public hospital vote that prosecutors say turned out to be as crooked as it looked.

What was never mentioned during the testimony, though, was any link to the defendant, Rezko, himself. Prosecutors promised jurors last week that connection will be coming as things progress, with firsthand witnesses detailing their conversations with Rezko. Rezko's attorneys say the connections just won't be there.

For now, jurors had to settle for Anne M. Murphy, the attorney for the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, who both advised board members on ethics violations and was present at the April 21, 2004, vote on whether to grant permission to Mercy Hospital to build a facility in Crystal Lake.

Before the meeting, Murphy said, she talked to the board chairman, Tom Beck, who, without explanation, said the board had to approve the Mercy hospital that evening.

Murphy offered this account:

With the conference room at the Holiday Inn in Chicago packed to see the vote, Beck knew it wasn't going to be an easy meeting.

"We are going to get creamed," Beck told Murphy.

Why not delay the vote, Murphy asked.

Beck never answered.

A short time later, the board took the vote, which needed five votes to pass. Board member Stuart Levine went first, voting yes. Then Imad Almanaseer did not vote but passed. Dr. Michel Malek added his assent for Mercy. So did Dr. Fortunee Massuda. Another board member passed, and two more voted no.

Beck, the chairman of the board, "looked … at the tally sheet and said 'Where are we?'" Then, with hundreds looking on at a public meeting, he got up to talk privately with Stuart Levine, who crossed over the dais to speak with Almanaseer, whispering in his ear.

"At that point," Murphy's testimony continued, "Tom Beck voted yes and Dr. Almanaseer indicated that he was going to change his vote from 'pass' to 'yes.' It would be fair to say that the audience … had a collective shared gasp."

The vote passed by the minimum five members. All five, say prosecutors, were members of the board who had been championed for appointment by Rezko, then the chief fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Alarmed at what she had seen, Murphy said she went over to Levine after the meeting to ask him why things had transpired as they had.

"He shrugged his shoulders and said, 'Sometimes, you have to be a good soldier,' " Murphy said.

Later, she said she overheard him and Beck talking, and she said they sounded as if they were on their way to see someone, but she did not know who.

As it turned out, Levine has admitted, he arranged with the contractor who was in line to get the Mercy Hospital business to get a $1.5 million kickback in exchange for letting the building go ahead.

Beck is scheduled to take the stand Wednesday. In exchange for his testimony, he will be immunized, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve indicated Tuesday. That means as long as he tells the truth, he cannot be prosecuted for any crimes he may admit to.

Levine could make an appearance at the trial as early as Thursday, although his testimony may come next week.

Not only was the Mercy vote as dirty as it looked at the time, but several people believed that it was dirty before it even happened, according to a court filing Tuesday.

Jeffrey Ladd, an attorney for Centegra, a competitor of Mercy, feared that Rezko was pushing the vote through and talked to Beck beforehand, the filing said. Beck advised him to contact Ed Kelly, a longtime powerful Democrat on Chicago's North Side, and ask Kelly to intercede with Rezko, the filing said. Ladd paid Kelly $80,000 in consulting fees, but to no avail, the filing claims.

Rezko's attorneys did not have an opportunity to cross-examine Murphy extensively Tuesday, but will resume their questioning of her Wednesday.

In his time before the jury Wednesday, Rezko's attorney Bill Ziegelmueller spent much of his time going over the Mercy application and using prosecution witness Donald Jones of the Illinois Department of Health to demonstrate how the planning board was constricted by ancient protocols that prevented staff members from recommending a new facility even when board members thought it might make sense.

The defense's theory is that Levine was the ultimate con man, pulling the strings so cleverly that, in many instances, even those who thought they knew him didn't know what he was really up to.

They maintain that Levine was responsible for all the corruption on state boards, and merely lied about Rezko to try to stay out of prison for the rest of his life.