Four witnesses in a row took the stand on Tuesday and denied ever signing the nominating petition in question.
No, that was not their signature.
No, they would not have signed a petition for Steve Irwin, who in 2022, was campaigning for the Democratic primary against then-state Rep. Summer Lee.
No, they did not know the defendant, Kirk Rice.
No, they did not give Rice permission to sign the document for them.
Rice, 66, of Harmar is on trial this week before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Satler, charged with identity theft, theft by deception, forgery, unsworn falsification, perjury and additional charges related to Irwin’s nominating petitions.
Rice pleaded not guilty, and during the defense’s opening statement on Tuesday, his attorney said the prosecution would not be able to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I ask you to critically listen to see if it makes sense to you what they say happened,” said defense attorney Tom Fitzgerald.
437 signatures
The allegations against Rice came to light shortly after the Irwin campaign submitted his petitions to the Pennsylvania Department of State in March 2022.
Someone at the state, said Deputy Attorney General Alex Cashman, noted an unexpected name on one of the petitions: U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon was listed as having signed.
As a federal judge, Cashman told the jury in his opening, Bissoon was supposed to remain impartial and was unlikely to have signed.
When officials followed up with her, he continued, she confirmed she had not.
The revelation initiated an internal investigation with the Irwin campaign, as well as a criminal investigation by the attorney general’s office.
According to investigators, Rice had been hired by the Irwin campaign to collect signatures. To get on the ballot, Cashman said, the candidate needed 1,000 signatures. Irwin submitted 1,906.
Rice collected 437 of them on 17 separate, double-sided pages, the prosecutor said. He was paid by the campaign $3 per signature.
Only two of those pages are part of the criminal case.
‘A lot of legwork’
On Tuesday, four Lawrenceville residents in a row — whose names all appeared on the nominating petitions — told the jury they never signed, although the addresses listed for them at the time were correct.
In one particular case, the woman noted that not only was it not her signature, but her name was spelled wrong, too.
The prosecution’s first witness, Special Agent Angela Mariani of the Attorney General’s Office, told the jury that she attempted to track down 60 different people listed on the petitions to verify they had signed.
“It was a lot of legwork,” she said.
None of the people she was able to reach, Mariani said, had signed the petitions.
Of all of the people who worked for the Irwin campaign to collect signatures, the agent said, Rice had the most, by far.
He was paid by the campaign in cash on March 7, 8 and 10, 2022, for a total of $1,340, Mariani said.
After the campaign learned about the allegedly fraudulent signatures, they hired two attorneys to do an internal investigation.
Now-Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jaime Hickton was one of them. She testified for about an hour on Tuesday, explaining the interview she had with Rice on March 18, 2022.
Meeting at a Sheetz in Cheswick, Hickton, another attorney, Lisa Mantella, and Rice, spoke at length.
“He, kind of unprompted, began talking about how experienced he was at the election process,” Hickton told the jury.
Rice told the attorneys he had close relationships with 39 of 43 county judges and had circulated petitions several times in the past.
According to campaign expenditure reports, Rice was paid thousands of dollars by several judicial candidates in 2021, 2017 and 2015.
Initially, Hickton said Rice confirmed he collected every signature on Irwin’s petitions and then turned them over to the campaign.
But, she continued, “he gave us different versions as the interview went on.”
“When we started challenging the narrative … it was at that point he was evasive,” Hickton said.
Judge Bissoon is expected to testify Wednesday.
During his opening, Cashman noted that Tuesday was primary Election Day.
“You’re double dipping on your civic duty,” he told the jurors. “Elections are vitally important to this society.”
Rice, Cashman continued, violated the public trust out of greed.
“It’s just about money,” the prosecutor said. “He’s writing names as fast as he can to take money.”
But those actions, Cashman continued, can have a much broader impact.
“It causes distrust in elections, in our system,” he said. “And it’s extremely dangerous.”
