Moe, ex-mayor will face trial together

The ex-mayor of Airway Heights and Spokane racing legend Orville Moe will be tried together on federal public corruption charges next year, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Shea ruled Thursday.

Moe’s failed attempt to be tried separately on federal bribery charges in U.S. District Court came a day after he was found in contempt of court in a civil lawsuit in Spokane County Superior Court.

Moe faces $1,000-a-day fines beginning Dec. 8 if he doesn’t give a court-appointed receiver bank records and other documents related to Spokane Raceway Park that he was ordered to produce six months ago.

The state court civil suit involves 500 limited partners who contend they were cheated out of $2 million in stock that they bought in the 1970s to help Moe build Spokane Raceway Park in Airway Heights.

News coverage surrounding Moe, including the protracted state court legal battle between him and his former investors, may be a reason to move the forthcoming federal bribery trial from Spokane, the federal judge said Thursday. But he denied Moe’s motion for a separate trial.

Moe is accused in a federal indictment of two counts of making financial bribes in 2002 and 2004 to Dale R. Perry, who engineered City Council votes favorable to Moe and Spokane Raceway Park when he was the mayor of Airway Heights. One of the alleged bribes was the $109,000 that Moe loaned Perry to refinance his personal residence – a loan memorialized in a deed of trust that was filed as a public record and obtained in 2004 by The Spokesman-Review.

Perry stepped down as mayor last year, several months after FBI agents obtained search warrants to seize computers from his home and office in the Airway Heights City Hall.

The same federal indictment charging Moe also accuses Perry, a 53-year-old state of Washington employee, of two counts of bribery and two counts of soliciting a bribe.

If convicted, Moe and Perry likely face federal prison terms and fines.

Court documents disclose that while mayor, Perry developed a “gambling addiction” and personal financial problems after winning a couple of jackpots at Northern Quest Casino. The casino, operated by the Kalispel Indian Tribe, is within the city limits of Airway Heights on property sold by Spokane Raceway Park.

Attorney Mark Vovos, hired by Moe, filed legal motions and argued before the court Thursday that it would be prejudicial to Moe to make him face the same jury that will decide the case against Perry.

The ex-mayor made “incriminating statements” when he was interviewed by Washington State Gambling Commission agents who asked him about getting loans from Moe in exchange for favorable votes by the Airway Heights City Council, Vovos told the court.

Those statements likely will be introduced as evidence during the trial and there would be a prejudicial “spill-over” on Moe, Vovos said.

Neither defendant is questioning the fact that Moe loaned Perry money, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said.

“They both have admitted the loans,” he said. “They both deny a criminal purpose for the loans.”

The prosecutor said the government intends to prove that criminal intent by introducing e-mails written by Perry, soliciting cash loans from Spokane businessman Paul Sandifur and Northern Quest executives Thomas Lien and Marianne Guenther, before the mayor went to Moe for money.

Perry, represented by Assistant Public Defender Amy Rubin, did not file a motion for severance asking to be tried separately from Moe.

Both defendants waived their “speedy trial” rights, and the judge set the trial for April 30.

The judge said the news coverage about Moe’s legal battles, while “legitimately newsworthy,” may raise legal questions touching on the defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

The federal judge, who is from Richland and handles most of his caseload there, periodically hears cases in Spokane. He could move the location of the Moe-Perry trial from Spokane to the Tri-Cities. Both cities are within the Eastern District of Washington.