Federal prosecutors signaled that they plan to rest their case March 11 in the corruption trial of former JEA executives Aaron Zahn and Ryan Wannemacher.
During hearings March 8, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tysen Duva told Senior U.S. District Judge Brian Davis that the government could possibly call two witnesses March 11 whose testimony was not expected to last a full day before bringing its case to a close.
Duva made the remark after a morning of hearings to determine whether the government could present testimony from former JEA board member Camille Lee-Johnson and former JEA executives Herschel Vinyard and Jon Kendrick to the jury. The hearings were held without the jury being present.
After Davis ruled that the witnesses could testify, Duva indicated that prosecutors did not plan to bring Lee-Johnson to the stand but could call on Vinyard and Kendrick before resting their case.
The trial began Feb. 15 with jury selection at the Bryan Simpson U.S. Courthouse. Zahn and Wannemacher are charged with conspiracy and wire fraud, with prosecutors alleging they schemed to create an incentive plan that would have paid them tens of millions of dollars in bonuses through a sale of JEA.
Invoking the Fifth
During the March 8 hearings not heard by the jury, Lee-Johnson repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination in response to questions from Duva about the incentive plan and sale.
Lee-Johnson was serving on the board in July 2019 when it voted to implement the employee incentive plan and initiation of a potential sale of the city-owned utility.
The government alleges that Zahn and Wannemacher misled board members about the value of the incentive plan while also manipulating them into selling the utility by falsely claiming it was failing financially and needed to be privatized.
Lee-Johnson also was the chair of the board’s compensation committee and would have been the incentive plan administrator if the incentives had been implemented.
In a hearing held without the jury present, Lee-Johnson invoked the Fifth Amendment to all but a handful of questions, Among those she declined to answer were whether she had conversations with Zahn and Wannemacher about potentially lavish payouts from the incentive plan through a sale of JEA, whether she knew the plan could pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to the plan participants and whether she supported Zahn drawing a bonus of up to $40 million through the plan.
She also invoked her rights when asked how she voted on the plan.
Beyond identifying herself and asking basic questions, such as confirming the identities of people sitting next to her in video clips, she said little from the witness stand.
Lee-Johnson is the only board member from 2019 who has not appeared before the jury.
Vinyard testifies
Vinyard, who became JEA’s chief administrative officer in April 2019, testified in the hearings that he told several JEA executives that he believed the incentive plan was inappropriate for a not-for-profit government organization.
The plan involved offering what were known as performance units to JEA employees. The units were similar to stock options, with their value tied to the utility’s financial performance.
Vinyard, a former secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection before his role at JEA, said he opposed payouts regardless of their size.
“Having served in government, I knew that this certainly wasn’t normal, and I was very uncomfortable with that,” he testified.
“It didn’t matter to me whether it was a dollar or a dime. If it’s not legal, it’s not legal.”
Vinyard testified that he told Zahn “more than once” that if the public found out about the bonuses, they would “light themselves on fire.” He said Zahn never responded.
‘Circuit breakers’ added
At Vinyard’s insistence, JEA put “circuit breakers” into the implementation of the plan, including requesting reviews of it from the Florida Attorney General’s Office and the Florida Commission on Ethics.
Defense attorneys for Zahn say the circuit breakers provide proof of their client’s innocence. Countering the prosecution’s accusations of scheming, the defense contends Zahn and Wannemacher developed the plan transparently and took responsible steps to vet it.
Days before the City Council Auditor issued an analysis showing that payouts could exceed $300 million, Zahn announced that JEA was indefinitely postponing the plan’s implementation.
“You wanted to make sure that if this moved forward, every I was dotted and every T was crossed. Do you recall saying that?” Eddie Suarez, an attorney for Zahn, asked Vinyard.
Vinyard responded that his goal was to ensure the plan was legal and complied with ethical guidelines.
Garrity rights
An issue during the March 8 hearings was whether testimony from Vinyard, Kendrick and Lee-Johnson would violate what are known as Garrity rights for Zahn and Wannemacher. Those rights protect public employees who are compelled to give sworn statements from having information in those statements be used against them in a criminal proceeding.
Zahn and Wannemacher were compelled to make statements under oath during late 2019 and early 2020 as the city and JEA tried to determine whether Zahn could be fired with cause. The hearings were held to determine whether the witness’s testimony drew from those statements.
The hearings also were held to determine whether prosecutors could add Vinyard and Kendrick to the witness list they filed before the trial began. The government argued that adding the witnesses was appropriate because the defense had presented evidence during cross-examination that made their testimony important for the jury to hear.
Duva told Davis that the testimony spoke to the government’s case, which he described as being “about lies, omissions and half-truths.”
Attorneys for Zahn and Wannemacher argued that they had built their defense around the original list and adding Vinyard and Kendrick after the trial began would harm their cases.