Attorneys delivering closing arguments in the federal criminal trial of Konstantinos Diamantis Monday presented jurors with dueling descriptions of the man who ran Connecticut’s school construction program for nearly six years.
Federal prosecutors portrayed Diamantis, a former state deputy budget director, as a money-hungry official who eagerly traded his influence on school building projects for bribes from construction contractors.
“The defendant was a corrupt public official. He asked for and accepted bribes,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novick, adding that Diamantis also wielded his immense influence on projects to “strike fear” into contractors.
Meanwhile, Diamantis’ defense attorney, Norm Pattis, portrayed his client as a dutiful and devoted public servant who used his aggressive personality to save taxpayers money on state-funded school projects.
Pattis argued that Diamantis was someone who “rocked some boats” when he took over the school construction program in 2016, particularly frustrating those contractors who were reaping huge profits on school construction projects.
“You heard him described as a person who got the job done even if he ruffled feathers,” Pattis said, adding that Diamantis “”knew how to shine sunlight into dark places.”
Jurors were then asked to decide the fate of Diamantis, who is charged with 21 counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators.
The jury deliberated for roughly an hour on Monday afternoon before they asked the judge to allow them to leave for the evening and come back on Tuesday.
As he left court for the day, Diamantis stopped and spoke briefly to reporters.
“I hope the jury takes the information, compares it, listens to the testimony, not just the text messages, because, as we all know, text messaging is not a complete way to communicate with one another and to get the message across. There are many phone calls,” he said. “So I’m hoping that the jury takes the mission seriously, compares all the information, and I think they’ll do the right thing.”
During the nine-day trial, Diamantis took the witness stand in his own defense and acknowledged that he was paid tens of thousands of dollars from Acranom Masonry, a company that worked on schools in Hartford and Tolland. He also admitted that his daughter was hired by Construction Advocacy Professionals, another company that was awarded work in Hartford, Tolland and New Britain.
In both cases, he said, he never used his position to benefit those contractors.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Francis told the jury Monday that Diamantis essentially admitted to some of the charges, namely bribery, when he acknowledged receiving payments from the two contractors.
“That was remarkable testimony by the defendant,” Francis said, adding that Diamantis was essentially forced into that testimony because of the overwhelming amount of direct evidence that prosecutors presented to the jury.
Francis also said Diamantis admitted that he threatened to remove Acranom from two school projects if the company’s executives didn’t pay him tens of thousand of dollars.
“The defendant took the stand and admitted to making every one of those threats,” Francis said. “I mean, how could he deny it?”
Diamantis sat at the defense table smiling as the federal prosecutors delivered their closing arguments. He shook his head when Francis argued that Diamantis’ testimony effectively counted as a “confession” to the bribery and extortion charges.
When it was his turn to address the jury, Pattis argued that Diamantis’ financial entanglements with the two contractors were not illegal because he never used his government position to benefit either company.
Pattis told the jury there was no “quid pro quo” between Diamantis and Antonietta DiBenedetto Roy, the owner of Construction Advocacy Professionals.
And he argued that John Duffy, the vice president of Acranom Masonry, was the one who was extorting from Diamantis. Pattis pointed to several text messages that suggested that Duffy expected to receive part of the money that Diamantis negotiated with Sal Monarca, the owner of Acranom Masonry.
In response to that argument, Francis told the jury that Diamantis should still be convicted of bribery and extortion even if Duffy did get half the money.
“I don’t know if Duffy was double dealing, but either way he was engaged in a conspiracy,” Francis said. “It’s not really a great defense to extortion and bribery that I gave half the money to my bagman.”
“What the defendant is doing is distracting you from the evidence,” Francis added.
As he made an impassioned plea for jurors to acquit Diamantis, Pattis observed that some of the jurors might not like Diamantis. He even noted that some of the jurors were rolling their eyes when he argued that Diamantis was not involved in accepting bribes from the companies.
But Pattis argued that federal prosecutors did not prove all of the elements for the crimes of which Diamantis is accused, especially when it came to the extortion charges. And he pleaded with the jury not to judge his client based on their feelings toward him.
“Think what you will of him, but hold the government to their burden of proof,” Pattis said.
Francis had the last word before the case was handed off to the jury, and he used those final moments to push back against on Pattis’ description of Diamantis as the one person who was looking to fix the state’s school construction program.
“Even if school construction did need to be cleaned up, the evidence shows the defendant had the dirtiest hands of all,” Francis said.