Jury selection begins in corruption case against Oyster Bay employee, uncle

Jury selection kicked off Tuesday in the case against a Town of Oyster Bay employee and his uncle, the first trial to start after the indictments of several people with ties to the municipality in what Nassau's district attorney dubbed an "interconnected web of public corruption."

Town highway maintenance supervisor Salvatore Cecere, 51, of West Sayville, and former town Public Works Commissioner Frank Antetomaso, 78, of Massapequa, each face single misdemeanor counts of official misconduct and theft of services.

Dozens of jurors reported to Nassau County Court for possible selection in the case, with five seated on the panel before the first day ended in a trial state Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood is presiding over.

Wood is based in Westchester but is handling a trio of corruption cases, including one against former Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest locally.

Venditto, who won an acquittal in a federal corruption case earlier this year, has pleaded not guilty in the state's case against him. He isn't expected to go to trial until March at the earliest.

In the trial at hand, prosecutors have alleged Antetomaso, then the principal of an engineering firm with Oyster Bay contracts, called his nephew and asked if the town would repair a friend's sidewalk after a dead tree damaged it.

Cecere told his uncle on a wiretapped call that a town program subsidizing homeowners' costs for sidewalk repairs had ended, but he would handle the work as a favor, according to the allegations.

He then had town employees remove the tree and repair the sidewalk at the home on Greenwood Drive in North Massapequa, according to prosecutors, who previously have said the homeowner never got a bill.

Cecere allegedly told authorities after learning he was caught on a wiretap that there was no special circumstance to justify the town performing this work.

The jurors seated for the trial so far are a registered nurse, a teacher, a wastewater treatment plant manager for New York City, and two Nassau County employees. 

Prosecutors Jesse Aviram and Robert Cavallo used one of their side's peremptory challenges — the rejection of a potential juror without a reason — to exclude a woman who said her father had worked for the town's sanitation department. She also said she previously had worked with another of Cecere's uncles and sent the former colleague a Christmas card every year.

The district attorney's office declined to comment on the trial Tuesday.

The defense used one of its peremptory challenges to reject a potential panelist who verbally sparred with Joseph Ferri, one of Cecere’s attorneys, and declared he didn’t like lawyers “in general.”

"I am glad we're finally getting a chance to clear my client's name," Antetomaso's attorney, Joseph Conway, said after court.

Ferri said the defense's position was that the prosecution "was still in search of a crime and there is no crime that has been committed by our clients."