A Cobb County judge has scheduled a second hearing to consider whether former Glock Inc. CEO Paul Jannuzzo deserves a new trial on charges of theft and racketeering for which he was convicted in March.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge LaTain Kell heard defense arguments for four hours Monday afternoon and ran out of time before prosecutors could begin their rebuttal. Kell set a second hearing July 6.
As general counsel and CEO of Glock Inc., Jannuzzo represented the Smyrna-based company in patent-infringement and product-liability lawsuits and served as the public face of the company through much of the 1990s. Glock Inc. is the North American subsidiary of the Austrian gun manufacturing company.
A jury convicted Jannuzzo of conspiring with another former Glock executive, Dunwoody lawyer Peter Manown, to divert about $5 million from the company between 1991 and 2003 using cloned bank accounts, forged documents and fraudulently obtained loans. Jannuzzo was also found guilty of stealing a custom-made pistol that had been loaned to him by the company.
Jannuzzo, 56, was sentenced in April to seven years in prison and 13 years on probation, plus a $100,000 fine and 200 hours of community service.
Defense attorney John Da Grosa Smith argued that prosecutors never proved Jannuzzo stole the gun but only introduced evidence that a gun was loaned to him.
Smith also argued that the state waited too long to bring the charges for racketeering, since Jannuzzo's alleged embezzling activities occurred before he resigned Feb. 13, 2003. The statute of limitations for racketeering is five years.
Cobb County prosecutors strung together the racketeering offenses and linked them to the alleged gun theft, discoveredin 2007, to obtain the grand jury indictment in 2009.
Manown pleaded guilty in 2008 to three counts of theft and was sentenced to 10 years on probation, with no jail time.
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