The attorney for a Harmar man accused of forging signatures on a politician’s election form said in closing arguments Thursday that the case came down to one point: prosecutors did not present enough evidence to convict.
Jurors who will decide the fate of Kirk Rice resume deliberations in the trial at 9 a.m. Friday.
Prosecutors presented multiple witnesses to back the state Attorney General Office’s case against Rice, now 66, who they allege passed off the bogus signatures to make money and get congressional hopeful Steve Irwin on the ballot in 2022.
Rice was charged with identity theft, theft by deception, forgery, unsworn falsification, perjury and additional charges related to Irwin’s nominating petitions.
Rice’s attorney, Tom Fitzgerald, told jurors Thursday the facts were thin — or lacked key details. He invoked the phrase “no evidence” at least six times in a motion to acquit Rice.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Satler denied it.
Fitzgerald then dropped the phrase eight more times into a 37-minute closing argument that started and ended with a history lesson about William Penn and a witch trial.
“All you’re going to be doing is speculating,” Fitzgerald told the jury. “If you’ve not been given the whole story, how can you come to a conclusion?”
The prosecutors, however, strongly disagreed.
Rice, who’s volunteered in politics for 40 years, gathered signatures, then signed off on the authenticity of 17 petitions in Irwin’s unsuccessful run against then-state Rep. Summer Lee, Deputy Attorney General Alex Cashman said.
Rice was paid $1,340 for his work, Cashman said. Three payments to him totaling that amount were documented in Irwin’s campaign finance reports and in Federal Election Commission filings.
Four witnesses took the stand Tuesday and denied ever signing the nominating petitions in question.
“You can’t argue with these facts,” Cashman said Thursday in his closing. “These are the facts of the case — and they are not contested.”
Federal judge: Not my signature
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, Cashman said, noted an unexpected voter had signed one of the petitions: U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon.
On Wednesday, Bissoon, whose job calls for her to remain impartial, spent just three minutes on the witness stand for the prosecution.
She explained that she received a phone call asking if she had signed a petition for Irwin, and then a text message showing her a picture of the signature purporting to be hers.
Bissoon confirmed the address listed with her name was accurate, but the signature was not.
To get on the ballot, Cashman said, the candidate needed 1,000 signatures. Irwin submitted 1,906.
Special Agent Angela Mariani of the state Attorney General’s Office, the prosecution’s first witness, testified that she attempted to track down 60 people listed on the petitions to verify they had signed.
None of the people she was able to reach, Mariani said, had signed the petitions.
Handwriting expert testifies
A handwriting expert testified for more than 90 minutes Thursday.
Prosecutors projected legitimate handwriting samples that they collected on a courtroom TV screen — alongside the alleged fakes.
Then expert Khody Detwiler cited “a different slant” on one lowercase “s” to conclude that the petition version of one signature was “highly probable” to be forged. In another, he raised questions about “completely different formations.”
The attorney general’s office found one writing sample from the same day the victim allegedly signed Rice’s form. One was dated 3-10-2022 in the victim’s handwriting; the second one, 3/10/2022.
“Anybody who signs on the same date … their signature tends to be more consistent,” Detwiler said.
Fitzgerald pushed back, repeatedly challenging the expert to confirm whether Rice had signed the victim’s signatures in his own hand. He asked the same question, one after the next, for every allegedly fake signature in the records.
“I don’t have an opinion on that,” Detwiler responded. “I have no comparable writing sample from Mr. Rice.”
“Is the answer you don’t know?” Fitzgerald shot back.
“I have no conclusion on whether he wrote that signature,” Detwiler repeatedly said.
Defense challenges evidence
Fitzgerald spent much of his closing Thursday planting seeds of doubt.
“The evidence … is ambiguous at best,” he told jurors. “There’s no evidence that (Rice) actually made or produced any of the signatures on the alleged petitions.”
Cashman responded with a metaphor — comparing election fraud to selling Giant Eagle crates of cereal, only for the supermarket to find out the Wheaties boxes were packed with plastic foam peanuts.
“I’m not asking you to find that (Rice) put pen to paper,” Cashman said, adding that the defendant signed off on petitions he knew were fakes.
“In this case, the defendant admitted he signed all these petitions,” Cashman added. “Everything here adds up.”
Reporter Paula Reed Ward contributed to this story.