Jury Convicts Deerfield Beach Commissioner
FT. LAUDERDALE (CBS4) – A Broward County jury wasted no time Wednesday in convicting suspended Deerfield Beach Commission Sylvia Poitier of public corruption charges.
Attorneys presented their closing arguments Wednesday morning and the case went to the jury around 11 a.m. By noon, the jury had convicted Poitier on all charges.
Poitier, 75, was charged with five misdemeanor corruption charges for allegedly failing to disclose a conflict of interest she had with a non-profit association that handles low-income housing funds for the city.
On Tuesday, however, Broward County Judge Melinda Brown dismissed one of the charges pertaining to the October 2010 commission meeting , according to the Sun-Sentinel.
The charges stem from information submitted on conflict of interest forms filed with the city in 2009 concerning her vote for a $30,000 grant to the Westside Deerfield Businessman Association.
According to investigators, the association owed Poitier's brother, Lionel Ferguson, $46,000 plus interest on a loan he had made to the group at Poitier's request.
The grant was not awarded, but Poitier's vote was a potential conflict of interest.
According to prosecutors, Poitier failed to properly disclose that a financial relationship existed between the WDBA and her brother. This disclosure should have taken place, and the proper paperwork filed, each time the WDBA was a topic to be voted on by the city of Deerfield Beach Commission.
Poitier took the stand Tuesday for about an hour in her own defense.
"I don't have a conflict [of interest] because my brother was not going to gain anything from the city and he wasn't doing business with the city," she told the jury according to the paper.
Poitier could be fined up to $1,000 and sentenced to a year in jail for each of the four counts she was convicted of on Wednesday.
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