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District justice blisters judge after gambling sentence
Friday, May 11, 2001 By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Having just been sentenced to 42 months in prison when he could have gotten 51 months, an unrepentant Ronald Amati yesterday vowed to appeal his gambling conviction and accused Senior U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond of favoring the prosecution.
Amati, 46, a district justice since 1988 in Washington County, was convicted in February of running a video poker operation out of a coffee shop in Finleyville.
His friend and co-conspirator, former schoolteacher Debra Vlanich, 49, also was found guilty, and yesterday Diamond sentenced her to two years of probation.
Amati admitted his wrongdoing and apologized in court.
But afterwards he accused Diamond of bias and a lack of compassion, saying the judge repeatedly denied defense motions during the month-long trial and imposed too harsh a prison term.
"We lost all our motions because of the judge," he said. "The judge is pro-government. I think he's been unfair. The judge carried the government's water throughout the trial. ... They try to take your soul away here. They take your soul."
Diamond, a former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, wouldn't comment on Amati's accusation or his sentencing decision.
But he actually gave Amati something of a break.
Under sentencing guidelines, he had the authority to sentence Amati within a range of 41 to 51 months. He chose 42 months followed by two years of probation, ordered him to pay a $7,500 fine and let him report on his own to prison.
The judge did tack on an additional eight months because Amati lied on the witness stand during the trial, as the prosecution pointed out in a pre-sentence filing.
But the judge rejected the government's other request for a stiffer sentence, which had been based in part on Amati's warnings to his cronies about police raids and his contention in recorded conversations that law enforcement and the judicial system in Washington County are rife with corruption.
In the end, Diamond said Amati used his elected position as a district justice to further the video poker operation and hinder police.
Diamond also noted that Amati has continually "trivialized and minimized" his offenses by saying, in effect, that illegal gambling isn't so bad because everyone does it. Amati repeated that claim after the hearing, arguing that the government has spent more than $2 million on what he described as a small-time gambling case.
But Diamond said the crime was serious because Amati was sworn to uphold the Constitution.
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