All charges against DeWeese held for court
All of the charges lodged against state Rep. Bill DeWeese, D-Waynesburg, were held for court Monday in Dauphin County. After three prosecution witnesses, Deputy Attorney General Ken Brown read portions of DeWeese’s grand jury testimony during which the legislator seemed to acknowledge that he knew that campaign tasks were being performed on legislative time.
During the portion that was read, DeWeese testified before the grand jury that mixing the two “was part of the culture.”
“Historically, it was just the way business was conducted,” Brown quoted DeWeese as testifying in September 2009.
However, DeWeese’s attorney, William Costopolous, argued that prosecutors left out his client’s repeated statements that he told people that they needed to take compensatory time, vacation time or personal days to do campaign work.
Costopolous asked Magisterial District Judge William Wenner to delay the hearing so that he could read the grand jury transcript and present other portions of it, but Brown said that the 200-plus pages could not be viewed except in the presence of an agent of the attorney general’s office.
Wenner ultimately denied the request, and bound charges of conflict of interest, theft and conspiracy to commit conflict of interest over to court.
After the decision, DeWeese challenged Attorney General Tom Corbett to bring the matter to trial before the November general election. DeWeese will face a Republican challenger and Corbett is a Republican running for governor.
“I think 12 million people deserve to have this decided between now and then,” said DeWeese.
The head of his Waynesburg office, Sharon Rodavich, was scheduled to have her preliminary hearing along with DeWeese. Before the start of the preliminary hearing, Rodavich’s attorney said she waived the charges against her to court.
She faced allegations that she did not perform legislative tasks, but instead did personal tasks and ran DeWeese’s campaign locally.
Brown declined to comment on whether Radovich’s waiver of the charges was indicative of a plea or a deal with prosecutors.
Read more in Tuesday’s Herald-Standard.