Former Suffolk County Legislator George Guldi will return to Suffolk County Court in Riverhead on September 13 to determine whether he will remain free, return to custody or face a new trial.
Prosecutors have appealed the court’s decision on July 12 to overturn Mr. Guldi’s March 2011 conviction on felony grand larceny and insurance fraud charges, due to the presence of a possibly biased juror. The decision resulted in his release from prison.
Mr. Guldi will appear before State Supreme Court Justice Mark Cohen after eight weeks of freedom, the most he’s had since his imprisonment in 2011. He spent the time living at a cousin’s house in Suffolk County, according to prosecutors.
If the prosecution’s appeal is denied on Wednesday, September 13—meaning his conviction would remain overturned by the higher court—Mr. Guldi could be re-arraigned on the two felony counts and face a new trial, according to previous statements of intent from Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota’s office.
However, the D.A.’s office also could opt not to re-try Mr. Guldi if the appeal is denied, due to the passage of years since he was originally convicted and the length of the sentence he has already served—six and a half years of a four-to-12-year sentence at Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York.
If the prosecution’s appeal is upheld and the original conviction affirmed, Mr. Guldi likely will go back to jail for an undetermined length of time.
“All I/we can say is that we are waiting to hear if the Court of Appeals will be granting leave to hear the case,” his attorney, Michael Scotto, said in an email on Wednesday.
Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the D.A.’s office, declined to comment.
In the March 2011 conviction that was overturned, Mr. Guldi had been found guilty of misappropriating more than $860,000 in insurance money that was supposed to be used to rebuild his home on Griffing Avenue in Westhampton Beach after a fire.
The conviction was thrown out after Mr. Guldi’s appeal was upheld; the appeal stated that despite his pre-trial challenge, one of the jurors who remained on the case was an employee for the American International Insurance Company, or AIG, the company that supplied the funds Mr. Guldi was supposed to use to rebuild his home.
He submitted another appeal at the time, attempting to have nearly three dozen counts of intent to fraud and grand larceny dismissed on the same grounds. But the appellate court denied his motion, stating that he had waived his right to appeal those charges when he accepted a plea deal while being prosecuted on a separate $82 million mortgage fraud scheme that targeted dozens of homes, most on the East End.
Mr. Guldi has also already served the maximum three-year sentence for the mortgage fraud conviction concurrently with the four-to-12-year sentence for the March 2011 insurance fraud that is the subject of the pending judgment.
Kate Riga on Sep 6, 2017