Lakewood SCHI founder's fate hangs in the balance

NEW BRUNSWICK - Rabbi Osher Eisemann, founder of Lakewood’s School for Children with Hidden Intelligence (SCHI), has a date with a judge here next month.

But Eisemann doesn’t know if that judge will be sending him to state prison on Aug. 9 or giving him a second chance to convince a jury he didn’t launder funds belonging to the school and engage in misconduct as its chief executive.

Superior Court Judge Joseph Paone on Friday scheduled the August court date and said it will either be  for Eisemann’s resentencing on money laundering and corruption charges or for a conference to discuss a new trial.

Previously:Why Lakewood SCHI founder, sentenced to jail in 2019, hasn’t spent a day behind bars

Paone scheduled the court event after a long day of arguments from Eisemann’s attorney asking for a new trial for his client, countered by reasons put forth by a deputy attorney general why the defendant shouldn’t get one.

Paone said he would decide within the next two weeks whether to grant Eisemann’s request.

Eisemann, now 65, of Lakewood, stood trial here in February 2019 before Superior Court Judge Benjamin Bucca. He was convicted of the two charges, but acquitted of others, and sentenced by Bucca to 60 days in jail.

A panel of appellate judges, in a scathing opinion in 2020 that blasted Bucca for being too lenient on Eisemann, ordered that Eisemann be resentenced by a different judge. Both crimes Eisemann was convicted of, by law, carry prison terms of five to 10 years.

With Eisemann’s jail sentence still held in abeyance, defense attorney Lee Vartan told Paone on Friday that while he was preparing for his client’s resentencing last year, school officials recommended he interview a former bookkeeper for the school for youngsters with special needs. When he did, the former bookkeeper, Rochel Janowski, claimed in a certification she made an accounting error in 2015 that formed the basis for Eisemann’s criminal conviction, Vartan said.

Vartan argued that Eisemann deserves a new trial not only because the new evidence from Janowski vindicates him, but because prosecutors knew about it and kept it from the defense.

“This is wholly exonerating evidence,’’ Vartan said. “The evidence that we have brought to bear before the court shows that Osher Eisemann is innocent.’’

Deputy Attorney General John A. Nicodemo argued a new trial is unwarranted because Janowski’s claims are not only uncorroborated, but contradicted by the evidence presented at the 2019 trial.

“Every piece of evidence that was adduced at trial is testimony that undermines what Rochel Janoski is saying in her certification, which is uncorroborated by anything,’’ Nicodemo said.

At the 2019 trial, the jury acquitted Eisemann of first-degree corruption of public resources, as well as theft and misapplication of entrusted property, but convicted him of money laundering and misconduct by a corporate official. The panel rejected allegations that Eisemann diverted $979,000 from the school to his own purposes, but it found he moved $200,000 of school money through private accounts, including his own, before funneling it back to the school through third-party organizations to make it appear he was repaying a debt.

The state alleged at the trial that the $200,000 was removed from the school’s account to write down a $200,000 debt Eisemann owed to Services for Hidden Intelligence LLC, the school’s nonprofit fundraising foundation.

Janowski, in her certification, asserted she mistakenly entered the $200,000 credit on the loan account to balance the school’s books, not to write  down a loan to Eisemann, as the state alleged. She said in the certification that Eisemann did not become aware of the mistaken bookkeeping entry until he was charged with crimes.

But, Vartan said the jury was “not led to believe, but misled to believe that he was responsible.’’

Vartan argued Eisemann never owed the foundation money. Instead, years of state audits of the books show the foundation actually owes Eisemann more than $300,000, he said. There is no evidence of any loan from the foundation to Eisemann, he said.

Nicodemo, however, insisted the opposite - that there was evidence presented at the trial of a loan to Eisemann.

The judge reduced arguments of the value of the newly discovered evidence to this: “If there’s no evidence a loan was outstanding, then that enhances the suggestion by Janowski that there was a mistake. If there was a loan outstanding, that undermines her credibility.’’

Eisemann founded the SCHI school in 1995 to serve a handful of developmentally delayed, medically fragile and emotionally challenged children, in part because he has a child with special needs. The school, on Oak Street in Lakewood, now serves more than 600 special needs youngsters, according to its website.

SCHI and the Lakewood public school district historically have had a strong connection over the decades. The school district budgeted $5.5 million this school year for “extraordinary services’’ for students, with much of the money paid to SCHI. The extraordinary services budget is up $856,000 from the prior year, according to the school district’s budge summary.

The school receives about $1.8 million a month from public school districts that send students there, the state attorney general’s office said when charges were first brought against Eisemann in 2017.

Eisemann has been on a leave of absence from the school since he was first charged in the criminal case.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Lakewood NJ SCHI founder's fate of sentence or new trial to be decided