Former Nassau County Executive Edward and Linda Mangano arrive at...

Former Nassau County Executive Edward and Linda Mangano arrive at federal court in Central Islip on Wednesday. Credit: James Carbone

A whole lot of talking going on

Lawyers were tasked with showing up at 9 a.m. — a half-hour before the retrial was supposed to begin on Monday.

First up was a bench conference.

And later, another.

And still later, a third.

Sandwiched in between, prosecutors and defense attorneys huddled with U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack in separate conference rooms, where attorneys met with their clients, Edward Mangano, Nassau’s former county executive, and Linda Mangano, his wife.

At one point, prosecutors and defense attorneys got together again.

At another, Azrack walked up to the bench when both prosecutors and defense attorneys had yet to return to the courtroom.

The few observers sitting in the gallery stood, as did the Manganos, who’d been left alone at the defense table.

“You’re on your own?” Azrack queried, just as defense attorneys Kevin Keating and John Carman came back into the courtroom.

But then came more meetings.

And another sidebar, once again covered by static from the white noise machine.

None of what had been under discussion was revealed to observers in open court.

Finally, at 10:36 a.m., a knock at the door signaled that the jury was ready to enter.

And there was one difference: The seat occupied by a woman, who had been Juror No. 1, now was occupied by a man — who until then, had been seated with the alternate jurors.

With that, the number of alternate jurors, which was six when the retrial began, is now down to four.

Keeping it clean

The first witness on the stand Monday also was a first for the retrial: John Morrissey, who works for the state Department of Health, did not testify the last time around.

He testified about steps he took after seeing Nassau jail employees, who initially handled food service for emergency personnel gathered at the county’s emergency offices in Bethpage in the days after superstorm Sandy, cleaning utensils in sinks of a men’s small, but "overused, in my view,” bathroom.

He said he feared possible contamination from fecal matter — presumably from men who washed their hands in the sinks pre-utensil cleaning — spreading from the utensils to emergency workers.

In turn, those workers could have been put at risk for hepatitis A or other maladies, such as rotavirus, that could more immediately curtail their activities.

One day later, Morrissey testified, he talked to the county’s health commissioner, Dr. Lawrence Eisenstein.

“He indicated that the county executive had a preferred vendor,” Morrissey said. “Preferred was the word he used.”

Morrissey continued, “I took it to mean that it was a preapproved vendor . . . I took it that way.”

Prosecutors contend that Mangano steered the emergency contract to provide food to emergency workers to his then-friend, Harendra Singh, who owned a restaurant nearby.

At one point, during cross-examination, Keating, Edward Mangano's attorney, circled back to Morrissey’s concerns about emergency workers’ health.

“If [they’re] sick, they can’t go out into the field?” Keating would ask later, during cross-examination.

“Yes,” came the answer.

“If they can’t go out, people die,” Keating continued.

Morrissey paused before answering.

“Yes,” he said.

“Nassau County residents?” Keating pressed on. “Is that correct?”

There was no pause this time around.

“Yes,” Morrissey answered.

Sandy redux

During cross-examination, Keating took Morrissey, who traveled extensively around Nassau to see damage, through the impact of the storm’s aftermath from damaged cars and fires to the scramble to get gasoline, after the lack of electricity left service stations unable to pump fuel.

Some of the questioning appeared geared toward building a foundation to defend the county’s decision to bring in food from Singh, whose restaurant was a few minutes away from the emergency management office, rather than Dover Group, whose catering facilities were much farther away.

But Morrissey, who had praised the quality of Singh’s food over that which had been provided by the county jail, didn’t bite.

“I didn’t know where they were coming from,” he said.

Money matters

Last week, as Keating was ending cross-examination of another witness, he asked several questions about Nassau’s finances.

The defense attorney returned to the subject with Morrissey on Monday morning, asking whether the witness knew in 2012 that “the county was broke . . . it had no money.”

Morrissey said that, yes, the subject had come up early on in a meeting with officials at the emergency center.

He said officials were told that “the county was economically distressed” and that “the county did not have a lot of cash to put forth on this event.”

“So we had to keep that in mind,” he testified.

Another first

Laura Munafo, who once worked for Mangano as an executive assistant and later for the county’s Office of Emergency Management, initially walked to the witness stand from same doorway used by the judge.

That was different.

For both the first and second trials, every other witness has entered the courtroom from the back of the courtroom, rather than from the front.

Munafo did not testify at the first Mangano trial, where another prosecution witness had described a profanity-laced exchange between himself and Munafo over who would provide food service during storm recovery.

On Monday, Munafo got to give her own account as Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Treinis Gatz took her through a series of text exchanges she had with Singh in the days after superstorm Sandy.

On Nov. 4, 2012, the pair exchanged 18 text messages (yes, the prosecution exhibit was that precise) about Singh providing food.

Singh kicks off the exchange with, “Please call me when you get a chance.”

Munafo testified that she talked to Edward Mangano before responding, “Okay I will double check with Ed. I am waiting on the state guy who will give me an answer right away.”

It takes about six minutes for Singh to respond: “I can start breakfast tomorrow. Please give me [a] time. Also we can send food tonight at no charge. Please advise.”

And so it goes, with Singh asking about when, how many meals and how many people for whom he is supposed to provide meals.

At one point, he tells Munafo: “You, Ed and your group can eat at Singletons.”

Which, Munafo said, she never did.

At another, Singh says, “I am bringing some special meal[s] and bre[a]d for you guys.”

That elicited a response from Munafo.

“Awesome,” she wrote.

In remembrance

Keating, during cross-examination, pressed Munafo on what she remembered about everything from a National Weather Service designation for Nassau to who paid for meals that she and Mangano ate at Singleton’s, Singh’s now-shuttered Bethpage restaurant.

He asked whether Mangano ever pulled out a credit card to pay for his meals.

“If he pulled it out, H. would say, 'No, you don’t have to pay,' and he didn’t,” Munafo testified.

She said, however, that Mangano would leave tips.

But there were multiple questions asked by Keating that Munafo said she could not answer or did not know.

At one point, Keating asked about a request the county made to Janet Napolitano, then secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, seeking more help.

“You have a good memory of that,” Keating snapped.

“No comments,” Azrack warned.

“Sorry,” Keating said.

Day’s end

Monday seemed to go extra long, perhaps because testimony started so late that Azrack decided to skip the usual morning break.

By evening, almost everyone seemed to be glancing at the clock, which seemed to be struggling to reach the usual 5 p.m. quitting time.

Keating was at the lectern, still in the midst of cross-examining former Office of Emergency Management official John Maguire (who, on Monday, as he had during the Manganos' first trial, described the aforementioned profanity-laced exchange he had with Munafo).

At one point, after Keating looked up, Azrack asked, “You weren’t going to finish cross in three minutes?”

“No,” Keating said.

Almost every member of the jury — along with several observers — broke into laughter.

Keating will continue on Tuesday.

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