As published by The Trentonian.

By Paul Mickle, The Trentonian

Posted: 02/07/14, 5:38 PM EST | Updated: 3 hrs ago

TRENTON — Mayor Tony Mack was convicted of all six federal corruption charges today in U.S. court. His brother, Ralphiel Mack, was convicted of three of the six bribery and extortion charges both were tried for.

The unanimous verdict came in at 5:30 p.m., following a full day of deliberations in which the jury sent out three questions for U.S. Michael A. Shipp.

Tears glistened in Mack’s eyes after the verdicts were announced. But he and his brother maintained their composure while their defense lawyers questioned the jury decisions and criticized the government for setting up the sting that brought them down.

Jurors did not leave the federal courthouse by public doorway, preventing reporters from questioning them about the deliberations.

Aternate juror Sherry Jackson, who had been the only African American on the jury panel of 16, burst into tears on leaving the courtroom. She wouldn’t say why she was crying so hard, as other alternates tried to comfort her.

By law, Mack lost the mayor’s post the moment he was convicted. City Council President George Muschal, the councilman for the South Ward, was expected to be sworn as mayor as soon as the proper paperwork was in put in order.

Federal prosecutors built the case against the mayor and his brother on the word of three admitted drug dealers – just one of the complaints raised before and after the trial by the defense.

The case hinged on the words of convicted sex-offender and mayoral ally Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni, who was heard and seen on government surveillance recordings taking cash from an informant trying to snare Mack.

The strongest point for the government might have been the testimony from Giorgianni’s caretaker and admitted partner in a pain-pill dealership, Mary Manfredo, who said she saw Giorgianni hand a wad of cash to the mayor in the steak shop in April of 2012.

“Then they embraced,’’ she testified.

The feds also showed they have marked bribe money seized from brother Ralphiel Mack, who was also on trial, hours after he allegedly got it from Giorgianni on July 17, 2012.

In addition, the feds presented mayoral aide and Mack boyhood friend Charles Hall III, who testified to getting wired up and flipping on the mayor when confronted by the FBI about his pill dealing for eccentric Giorgianni and his cohort Manfredo.

Both Manfredo and Hall testified that they hope Shipp, who will sentence them on the drug charges, gives them some consideration for coming clean about their roles in the unrelated bribery and extortion charges against the mayor and his brother.

The case against Mack was hatched by the FBI. It used a disbarred lawyer facing possible criminal prosecution, the late Lemuel Blackburn, to approach Giorgianni with money and a longtime fed informant to pretend to be a developer interested in the parking project.

In government wiretaps and spy-camera videos played in court, Giorgianni is seen and heard explaining to the late Lem Blackburn, the disbarred lawyer, that Mack avoids bribery charges by using “buffers’’ like him to collect the money.

But in another recording, Giorgianni tells Hall not to worry about him or Mack getting betrayed by him because he’d say he kept all the money: “If some (expletive) wants to give me money, I grab it.’’

That ties in with the defense theory that Giorgianni realized the FBI sting was underway and decided to turn it on its ear by pocketing the money, not passing it along.

Arrested with Hall and Manfredo on the pill charges, Giorgianni was sent to a federal medical prison for a psychiatric evaluation that called him sane.

Prosecutors brought out that he demanded his caretaker send $200 to another inmate there so he could buy illegal pain killers to supplement his legitimate daily intake.

In pleading guilty to dealing oxycodone with Hall and Manfredo, Giorgianni also decided to turn government witness against Mack.

“I renew my motion for a mistrial. Even with the best legal minds, no one could figure out what counts four through six mean. It’s a poorly drafted indictment,’’ said Ralphiel Mack’s lawyer, Robert Haney.

Haney and the mayor’s lawyer, Mark G. Davis, are supposed to meet Monday with the judge and prosecutors, Matthew Skahill and Eric Moran, to talk about the defense appeals for Shipp to toss out the verdicts, despite the jury finding.

Paul Mickle

Photo/Natalie Cake - Tony Mack in Washington D.C. During United States Conference Of Mayors January 2013.