Newark, NJ - Ex-Assemblyman is Found Not Guilty of Accepting Bribes from Dwek

JERSEY CITY — Former state Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith was acquitted today of accepting $15,000 in bribes that he insisted were campaign contributions.

The not-guilty verdict is the second consecutive trial defeat for the U.S. Attorney’s Office since Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez was acquitted of all charges in October. Until that acquittal, federal prosecutors had a 10-year streak of corruption convictions.

Smith, 61, was accused of accepting two cash payments in 2009 from disgraced developer Solomon Dwek, who was secretly working with federal investigators and posing as developer David Esenbach.

During his three-week trial before U.S. District Judge Jose Linares in Newark, Smith insisted the cash was campaign contributions, initially for what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Jersey City. A one-term assemblyman, Smith had announced before his arrest that he did not plan to seek re-election.

The Hudson County Democrat was charged with conspiracy to commit extortion, money laundering, two counts of attempted extortion and two counts of bribery.

Smith’s attorney, Peter Willis, had argued his client was set up and that federal investigators pursued him even after he told Dwek he doesn’t take money in return for favors.

This was the first trial in which Dwek, who secretly worked for federal investigators for two years, did not testify. Instead, prosecutors called as their key witness Edward Cheatam, a friend of Smith’s and a former Jersey City housing official and school board member who took bribes from Dwek and introduced the developer to Smith.

Dwek videotaped conversations and meetings with dozens of political officials and religious leaders who were arrested as part of the state’s largest public corruption sting that netted 46 people.

Prosecutors argued Smith’s spiritual adviser Richard Greene unknowingly served as an intermediary between Dwek and Smith to deliver $5,000 in a Federal Express envelope to the lawmaker in the parking lot of the Broadway Diner in Bayonne on April 30, 2009. Smith received another envelope, this time containing $10,000, from Dwek via Cheatam on July 17, 2009, in the parking lot of the Malibu Diner in Hoboken.