McCullough remains free as lawyers argue latest motions

Even if the Allegheny County District Attorney's Office agreed that former county Councilman Chuck McCullough should have gotten more people to testify during a recusal hearing last month, officials there don't think it was enough for the state Supreme Court to order a do-over.

McCullough “is as adept at making unsupported scurrilous allegations as he is at plundering the finances of an elderly woman,” wrote Deputy District Attorney Michael Streily in response to McCullough's request that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court exercise its “King's Bench” power to help him get a new judge from outside Allegheny County for his sentencing.

McCullough, an attorney convicted of taking money from an elderly client's estate to support political campaigns and his wife's charity, is arguing that Common Pleas Judge Lester Nauhaus acted improperly before and during his bench trial.

He says President Judge Jeffrey A. Manning mishandled a hearing Nov. 19 when McCullough tried to prove his allegations that Nauhaus had improperly talked about the case with McCullough's previous attorney and the judge's secretary. Witnesses such as attorney Jon Pushinsky and Nauhaus refused to testify, and Manning agreed with them, tossing the motion to recuse Nauhaus.

Streily said there were other ways to have gotten the testimony, which the DA's office wanted to hear.

Streily wrote that if McCullough had testified about the alleged conversations between Pushinsky and Nauhaus, where he said the judge had a mutual friend tell Pushinsky to “go nonjury,” he could have avoided the attorney-client privilege Pushinsky cited in refusing to testify at the hearing. The District Attorney's Office later charged McCullough with perjury and obstructing justice because he had sworn his decision to waive a jury was made without threats or promises, making either that waiver or his petition for recusal false.

McCullough's attorney seemed stymied when another witness at the hearing refused to identify who told him that Nauhaus had talked to his secretary about convicting McCullough. But she could have simply called the secretary to testify, since she was at the hearing, Streily wrote.

“For petitioner to assert that he was unable to determine the secretary's identity ... demonstrates a lack of effort. The commonwealth obtained her name by simply asking Court Administration for the identity of Judge Nauhaus' secretary during the McCullough trial,” he wrote. “The application should be denied and petitioner should proceed to sentencing before the Honorable Lester G. Nauhaus.”

The Supreme Court had not decided whether to take the case as of Friday.

McCullough is set for sentencing before Nauhaus on Thursday.

The proceedings are the latest in a case that has dragged on for six years. McCullough remains free on bond.

Matthew Santoni is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412 391 0927 or msantoni@tribweb.com.