If you’re marking off the days on your calendar as we are, you know it’s now less than a month before Keyport Mayor and all-around wacky guy John Merla is scheduled to go on trial for corruption.
The ever-optimistic mayor was caught up in the Operation Bid Rig sting last year by federal investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and is currently facing an eight-count federal indictment for corruption that could cost him a maximum of $2 million in fines and 120 years in prison upon conviction.
But unlike many of the other politicians and hangers-on also netted in the sting who have since pleaded guilty and are now facing sentencing, Merla has refused to go gently into that good night, and has been getting ready to convince a jury of his long-proclaimed innocence when his trial starts Oct. 10.
In the months since his indictment, Merla seems to have staked his hopes on the belief that if he takes the stand to testify, the men and women of the jury will immediately understand that he is simply an honest and humble public servant caught up in a bogus case brought by an overly ambitious prosecutor with a grudge.
That strategy worked for him years back, the first time he was indicted for corruption and found not guilty. Who says lightning never strikes the same place twice?
And he’s certainly been practicing his testimony.
Last June, Merla dropped out of the Keyport mayor’s race, not because the very notion of the man running for re-election at the same time he’s facing a passel of corruption charges is ludicrous, but because he was spending so much time putting on his game face.
“I have to spend a lot of time preparing,” he told our reporter then. “I can’t do both. I had to do what’s more important for me right now. There will be plenty of time for me to run in the future.”
Unless he’s in prison, of course. Then the only running he’ll be doing is if he escapes.
If nothing else, the prospect of a trial in which Merla takes the stand in his own defense has reporters from all around the area and in our office positively giddy with anticipation. There’s nothing a reporter likes better than a good trial, and this one promises to be especially juicy.
So far, the evidence against the defendants in the Operation Bid Rig cases has been so compelling that most of them have just thrown in the towel and pleaded guilty. The U.S. Attorney apparently has many of the indicted offenses on tape, and the prospect of everyone and his cousin seeing the evidence of their greedy avarice in living color was simply too horrible to contemplate.
Not our John, however. John apparently can’t wait to get in there and start mixing it up.
And you can bet his testimony will be colorful. This is the same guy, after all, who erupted verbally at a Borough Council meeting this spring where members were considering a liquor license issue regarding another member of the Merla family. After Keyport Detective Lt. Thomas Mitchell finished giving some testimony on the matter the mayor didn’t like, Merla began heckling the cop, saying, among other things, “You ain’t got nothing!” “Go ahead and laugh!” and the truly weird and mysterious “Cinco de Mayo!”
A couple of weeks later, when enough people were talking about the mayor’s outburst that he felt the need to explain himself, he told a standing-room-only crowd that he responded so violently because he thought he saw a smirk on Mitchell’s face that he interpreted as an insult to his mother. “No one insults my mother,” he said. And criticized for using an expletive, he said he was only cussing because he’d just realized he’d accidentally split his pants.
“I stood up and ripped my pants and said, ‘Oh sh-!’ ” Merla said.
Mother insult! Split pants! You just can’t make this stuff up – unless you’re Mayor John Merla, that is. And if he can come up with something that utterly believable to explain why he used a bad word, you have to imagine his explanation for all those thousands of dollars in bribes and corrupt payments he’s charged with taking will be truly awe inspiring – a tale for the ages.
We can hardly wait – so don’t let us down, John. Get up there and tell them how the cow ate the cabbage. We’ve got stacks of fresh notebooks and our pencils are sharp.
Cinco de Mayo, Brother Merla! Cinco de flamin’ Mayo!
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Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the immutable law of cascading consequences – how sometimes a small thing happening can lead to a bigger thing, and a bigger thing, and a bigger thing, until that small thing results in an event of earth-shattering consequence.
To illustrate, I noted that two $10 throw pillows purchased by my wife had eventually led to the need for new upholstery for the couch, new carpet, fresh paint, new appliances, a recliner, a sleeper sofa for my wife’s wardrobe room, and innumerable area rugs that tie the whole shebang together.
I noted that at the end of that week (and the end of my bank balance), we were scheduled to receive a new sofa and chair to match everything done so far, and at that point, my home would be complete and my duties as cheerful co-decorator would be over for the rest of my natural life.
“Unless she brings home a couple of new throw pillows,” I wrote. “Then it’s Katie, bar the door.”
As promised, the couch and sofa were delivered on Friday. On Saturday, my wife went shopping at the bed-and-bath. She returned home with two new throw pillows to match the couch.
There’s an old philosophical conundrum that asks, “If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?”
My version of that question would be: “If a man who’s just seen two new pillows in his living room screams in the detached garage and there’s nobody around to hear him, does he still make a noise?”
I don’t know, but I have a feeling I’m about to find out.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected].