After last Wednesday, we can add at least one more entry to our lexicon of words describing former Keyport Mayor John Merla – felon.
It looks like I won’t be eating crow after all – which I might have been compelled to do had he gone to trial and been judged innocent. Since the day he was first indicted in February 2005, Merla has sworn that he was guilty of nothing (liar?) and would eventually be acquitted by a jury. He was still spouting that line of bull sweat as late as a couple of weeks ago (compulsive liar?), when our newspaper, the Independent, profiled him as he left office.
In pleading guilty last week to one count of bribery for accepting a $2,500 corrupt payment (he also admitted to taking three other payments, about $24,000 in total) for himself from FBI agents and informants (larcenist?), the ex-mayor apparently cut himself a pretty sweet deal (rank opportunist?) with U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie’s office.
The newspaper photo taken outside the courthouse on the day of his guilty plea shows Merla grinning like he just won the lottery (or swiped it), and in a way, he had.
In total, the ex-mayor was facing an eight-count federal indictment that could have cost him a maximum of $2 million in fines and 120 years in prison upon conviction. In exchange for his guilty plea on the single count, Christie’s office dropped the remaining seven counts, so now the most Merla is looking at is between 24 and 30 months in federal prison (jailbird? convict?) and a $250,000 fine. Smart money says he’ll do about a year, although the judge has some discretion in sentencing.
At the plea hearing, Merla’s attorney said his client has a “deep sense of remorse for compromising the trust placed in him by the people of Keyport.”
But it’s too late to claim remorse now (hypocrite?), and only a blind man would fail to see through his smoke screen of untruth. If he was truly remorseful, he would have stopped taking bribes after the first one he admitted last week to taking.
Instead, he admitted doing it again, and again, and again. And for nearly two years after his indictment (and knowing in his mind and heart that he was guilty), he denied any wrongdoing with righteous indignation, blamed his critics and the press, even continued for almost the entire time as Keyport’s mayor.
Where’s the remorse in that, John? Where’s the shame?
With his guilty plea, Merla joins the dismal rank of other Monmouth County politicians and hangers-on who treated the well of public trust like a chamber pot and their jobs like a license to steal. The names on the county’s Wall of Shame as a result of guilty pleas or indictments stemming from Operation Bid Rig and similar investigations are distressing in their number. Zambrano. Coughlin. Scarpelli. Broderick. Hyer. Weldon. Hamilton. Scannapieco. Larrison. Iadanza. DeLisa. Condos. Palughi. Townsend. Saunders. O’Grady.
Merla.
It’s just too bad that with his admission, John Merla robbed us of the closure, and the enlightenment, of a trial. It would have been good to see the depth and details of his corruption, the hard evidence of his indictable avarice, set forth in the public arena of a courtroom. It would have been instructive to hear Merla’s explanations, his version of events (equivocator? phony?) from the witness stand. It would have been satisfying to have a photographer capture the look on his face as the jury pronounced judgment. He probably wouldn’t have been wearing the wide grin he was flashing for the cameras the day he made his guilty plea.
But despite his assurances to the contrary, despite his sworn intention to fight his case to the bitter end, despite his endless protestations of innocence (perjurer? prevaricator? fabricator?), it looks like in the final analysis Merla didn’t have enough courage to roll the dice.
To be honest, I never really thought he would.
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It’s a comforting fact that the worst of times often bring out the best in people – and the way the people of Freehold have come together after the tragic deaths of three popular high school students and a grandmother from Old Bridge in an automobile crash on Jan. 10 has been touching.
Michael Dragonetti, 17, James Warnock, 17, Andrew Lundy, 16, and Ruth MacArthur, 68, were laid to rest last week, but it will take a long time before the community comes to terms with its grief.
Even so, the outpouring of support for the families of the victims, the sensitive and professional manner with which school district officials – particularly Freehold High School Principal Linda Jewell – handled the aftermath of the tragedy, and the honest and thoughtful discussion taking place about how to prevent future accidents like this shows that Freehold is indeed a community, and that it will grow stronger through adversity. They’re setting an example in Freehold for the rest of us, should we ever face similar circumstances.
There are several moving letters to the editor in this week’s edition of the News Transcript about the accident, the grief process, and suggestions for tweaking our state laws regarding young drivers. So far, no one has suggested the option I support – requiring beginning drivers to pass a defensive driving course as well as the currently required driver education course – but there are plenty of good ideas and warm words about loss and love all the same. If you receive the News Transcript, please take the time to read those letters in the paper. And if you don’t receive that publication, you can check the letters out online at our Internet Web site, www.gmnews.com. Just click the button on the main page for the News Transcript, and then click the button for letters.
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After News Transcript Managing Editor Mark Rosman wrote a column recently excoriating the anonymous posters on a local message board, he received several thoughtful e-mails about his column, and one letter filled with the most vile religious and racial bigotry imaginable. Naturally, the letter came with no return address and it was unsigned. That’s not surprising, though. Racists and bigots almost always prefer to operate in hiding, which proves Rosman’s point about their fundamental cowardice.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].