A day after his client admitted to tax evasion, Albert Flora used his closing arguments Wednesday to try to steer the jury toward two main points: that developer Robert Mericle never conceived of the fee paid to former Luzerne County Common Pleas Judge Mark A. Ciavarella as a kickback and that Ciavarella never extorted PA Child Care owner Robert Powell.
“The [prosecution] is standing on thin ice and it’s cracking all around,” Flora told the jury before a packed courtroom that spilled over into a second courtroom where a small audience watched the proceedings on closed-circuit monitors.
