Ex-Leader of Jail Officers Guilty of Bribery in Trial That Cast Shadow Over De Blasio

NEW YORK — Norman Seabrook, the former head of the New York City correction officers’ union, was found guilty of bribery on Wednesday in a case that cast a shadow over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fundraising efforts and touched on corruption in the New York Police Department.

The jury remained deadlocked on a second count of conspiracy. After the panel returned its partial verdict at 3:15 p.m., the judge told the jury to continue deliberating.

“Your job is not done yet,” said Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is presiding over the case. “You have another count to consider.”

Seabrook, 58, who for two decades led the correction officers’ union, was convicted of steering $20 million of his union’s money into a risky hedge fund in exchange for a kickback worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was the second time a jury heard evidence: His first trial ended in a mistrial last fall.

Because it was a partial verdict and the jury was to continue deliberating, the judge instructed the audience in the courtroom not to react. But when the guilty verdict was announced, some of Seabrook’s supporters began to cry. One woman shook her head and began to pray; a man held his face in his hands.

“Don’t cry, baby,” Seabrook said to a supporter in the front row.

Much of the government’s case rested on the word of Jona Rechnitz, a wealthy real estate developer who both sides agreed was a prodigious liar with an unsavory history.

“We are not asking you to like Jona Rechnitz,” a prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, told the jury at the beginning of the trial. “We are not asking you to approve of the way he lived his life.”

Still, the government relied on Rechnitz’s testimony to build a narrative that ultimately led to Seabrook’s conviction. Rechnitz, who pleaded guilty to fraud conspiracy and is cooperating with the government, said he brokered a deal between Seabrook and Murray Huberfeld, a family friend and the founder of the hedge fund Platinum Partners. Seabrook agreed to invest the union’s retirement money in Huberfeld’s fund, and in exchange, Huberfeld would pay him a cut of the profit, the government said.

Seabrook ended up investing $20 million in the fund, $19 million of which the union eventually lost.

Once one of the city’s most powerful labor leaders, Seabrook had been charged with one count of honest services wire fraud, or bribery, and one count of conspiracy; each carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. It was a risky proposition for the prosecution to once again depend on Rechnitz, whose inconsistent testimony in the last trial seemed to lead to a hung jury. A juror in the fall referred to him as a “straight-up liar.”

Indeed, the trial often returned to a contentious point: Who was really on trial?

The defense tried to portray Rechnitz as someone who had invented a story about a bribe to Seabrook to persuade authorities to reduce his own sentence. In her opening statement, Margaret E. Lynaugh, one of Seabrook’s lawyers, said the case should be called “Jona Rechnitz versus Norman Seabrook.”

“First, Jona Rechnitz is a pathological liar,” Lynaugh said. “And second, Jona Rechnitz always takes care of Jona Rechnitz.”

The government tried to focus the jurors’ attention on Seabrook. “The United States v. Jona Rechnitz is a case that already happened. It ended with Jona Rechnitz’s guilty plea,” said Martin S. Bell, a prosecutor, in his closing argument. “This is nobody else’s trial.”

The government said that the bribe was delivered in a nearly cinematic scheme: One December evening, Rechnitz took $60,000 in cash from a safe in his office, and crammed the bills into a handbag he had purchased from the Salvatore Ferragamo store, Seabrook’s favorite designer. He then delivered the bag to Seabrook before they attended a Torah dedication ceremony together.

This time, jurors seemed to believe that Rechnitz was telling the truth, even as he admitted to a litany of lies he told in the past. Among other things, he said he became a police chaplain in Westchester County in order to obtain a special parking pass, though he had no religious qualifications; he applied for a pistol permit and lied on the application, claiming he worked in the jewelry business and therefore needed the weapon; he filed an insurance claim for a $59,000 lost watch, found the watch, and kept the insurance money; and he said he owned a yacht he was actually renting, writing to the crew that “staff is to act as if this client, Jona, owns the yacht and the client should be treated as such.”

Huberfeld, who was Seabrook’s co-defendant in the first trial, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in May.

In this trial, Rechnitz was caught in fewer inconsistencies on the stand, and he seemed more prepared to answer the defense’s questions. He also spent less time talking about his relationship with de Blasio, testimony that dominated much of the first trial.

At that time, he said he donated tens of thousands of dollars to de Blasio’s re-election campaign in exchange for a direct line to City Hall, including the mayor’s personal phone number and email address. But this time, prosecutors kept Rechnitz’s testimony more narrowly focused on his shady business dealings and on the payment to Seabrook.

The defense argued that Rechnitz would say whatever he thought would help him get a more lenient sentence for his own crime. It was true, they said, that Rechnitz had showered Seabrook with expensive trips, fine cigars, fancy meals, and flattery. But he did not betray his union in response.

“You can fault Norman Seabrook for falling for Jona Rechnitz’s act,” said Paul Shechtman, Seabrook’s lawyer. “But boy, was it a good act.”

After the partial verdict was announced Wednesday, the lawyers and the judge left to discuss whether the jury should continue to deliberate. In their absence, Seabrook’s supporters consoled each other. The jury sat, almost completely still, in the silent courtroom, while the man they had just pronounced guilty looked on.