In urging leniency, ex-JEA CEO Aaron Zahn tells his own story | Commentary

In pressing U.S. District Judge Brian Davis for leniency, attorneys for ex-JEA CEO Aaron Zahn spun a remarkable and tragic story about the utility executive's life, casting him as the victim of a relentless local media who has suffered "extrajudicial" punishment since his fall from grace five years ago as the youthful leader of one of Jacksonville's most important government agencies. Directly challenging the portrait federal prosecutors presented to jurors in the spring of a greedy C-suite fraudster, defense lawyers centered Zahn instead as a thoughtful, generous man with an interest in ethics who has endured bad luck and setbacks since childhood.

It's not unusual for defense attorneys to present their client in the most favorable light while lobbying for judicial mercy, but the written narrative Zahn's attorneys provided Davis ahead of his sentencing hearing — scheduled Tuesday — goes further: Beneath his tragic, sometimes saccharine narrative lies an enduring defiance about his criminal case. Echoing the closing arguments of his trial in March, when one of Zahn's lawyers told jurors he had been victimized by a "deep state, unelected bureaucracy," the sentencing memorandum Zahn's attorneys prepared still quibbles with key facts of the case and, at turns, minimizes the jury's decision as having criminalized a "flawed business idea" — not the historic verdict in a corruption trial many local officials and political observers considered it to be.

Even in this late hour, Zahn still seems to be reaching for vindication.

Zahn will have a final chance to speak for himself during Tuesday's hearing. If he plans to show contrition before Davis, his sentencing memorandum previewed none of it.

"The prosecution and conviction in this case have wreaked substantial havoc on Aaron’s personal life and family, as well as his ability to maintain any professional engagement," his attorneys wrote. "The relentless media criticism from 2018 to present ensures that Aaron will continue to be punished for the rest of his life as his public reputation has been forever destroyed."

After a month-long trial, a jury in March convicted Zahn of a conspiracy to steal municipal funds and of wire fraud. In essence, prosecutors argued that Zahn and former JEA CFO Ryan Wannemacher schemed to skim millions of dollars off the top of a potential sale of JEA — Jacksonville's city-owned electric, water and sewer utility, a transaction that was expected to generate a windfall for City Hall worth billions. To get that money, prosecutors argued, Zahn first had to concoct a fraudulent business case to justify privatizing JEA, an idea long considered a third rail in Jacksonville politics, and he then had to hide his get-rich scheme beneath layers of consultant and attorney work product and lie to the board of directors.

That privatization effort collapsed as public controversy around it and Zahn mounted in late 2019, but prosecutors came to believe Zahn's deceptions went far enough to merit opening an investigation.

Wannemacher, whose fate was decided by a separate jury, was acquitted of both charges.

Despite his conviction, Zahn's sentencing memo in some respects frames him as a victim — of the media, of the prosecution, of vigilantes. After relocating from Jacksonville, Zahn's attorneys wrote, "Their new home address was publicized online, and online hackers targeted their home, which further eroded their sense of security and privacy." The memo does not provide any further details about that alleged incident. The document also repeats a belief of Zahn's, which he's vocalized since his time as JEA's CEO, that media scrutiny of his official role "enraged" members of the public so much that they've harassed him and his family (Zahn and his attorneys have also long baselessly claimed the Times-Union has "targeted" his family).

The most immediate goal of Zahn's defense lawyers was to urge Davis to sentence Zahn to probation instead of the "multi-year" prison sentence prosecutors recommended this week. Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Tysen Duva told Davis he'd make a more specific recommendation during Tuesday's hearing but said at minimum that Zahn's crimes justified some time in prison.

For Zahn, that would be another injustice in a life that has seen its share of them. Drawing on his life story and comments from his family members and friends, Zahn's attorneys recounted how his childhood experience being teased — "because as a child his head always appeared a bit too large in contrast to his body" — helped Zahn become "kind and generous to people despite physical differences or social status." An accident that left him with severe burns and a long recovery also dashed his dreams of becoming an Olympic swimmer, "a pivotal moment in Aaron's life" when he then devoted himself to his studies.

In adulthood, Zahn's attorneys presented him as indifferent to material wealth and worldly. He studied psychology and philosophy at Yale because of "his desire to understand human behavior and ethics," and after college and in between jobs — after deciding life in finance wasn't for him — Zahn lived for a year at a family lake house in Minnesota, where he became a yoga instructor, took piloting lessons and "dove into his books on theology, philosophy, and life."

It's often difficult to square this picture of Zahn with the evidence prosecutors amassed and the years of interviews I've conducted with people inside and outside JEA who worked with or for him, many who remembered him to be mercurial and dangerously arrogant. During the trial, Davis saw glimpses of this alternative view: Jason Gabriel, City Hall's former top lawyer, recalled for jurors that his refusal to back the legality of Zahn's get-rich scheme prompted an expletive-laden tirade from Zahn. One JEA union leader said she felt Zahn was duplicitous and despised being questioned. His former executive assistant once told me Zahn oversaw a "flat-out toxic" work environment.

Yet that is an undeniably incomplete picture of his life. "Aaron is a 44-year-old husband, father of three, and devoted son and friend who has contributed to the welfare of others in numerous ways," his attorneys wrote. I have no reason to doubt those attestations by his friends and family members. Although Zahn has long confused scrutiny of him as a public official as deeply personal attacks, the fact is the federal case and the newspaper's investigations were about his role as JEA's chief executive — not who he is at home.

It's impossible not to sympathize with his tragic present circumstances — and particularly with his family, who had no role in his government misdeeds. But Zahn's self-narrative has always omitted a key player: Zahn himself. This case was not an avalanche or a tornado, some natural disaster that befell an innocent bystander. Zahn had agency, and with his agency he chose to attempt to enrich himself, plunging JEA and its 2,000-strong workforce into uncertainty. During the trial, prosecutors repeatedly, and appropriately, emphasized that Zahn used the threat of mass layoffs as a tool to convince his board of directors and the public that privatizing this vital public agency was a financial necessity. That scared people — his own employees.

Zahn had enablers, yes, including within former Mayor Lenny Curry's administration, who helped thrust him into a role he was simply not suited for — a plain reality that was obvious in real time. And there are others around this sprawling Jacksonville controversy who escaped meaningful repercussions. But that does not absolve Zahn.

"This is a historic criminal case in the Jacksonville Division of the Middle District of Florida," Duva, the lead prosecutor, wrote Davis this week. "The jury’s verdict and the sentencing of this former CEO of Jacksonville’s most coveted independent agency is momentous."

Prosecutors have already told Davis they do not support jailing Zahn at the upper end of the probation officer's recommended sentencing guidelines — about nine years. That's fair: Zahn will never work in high finance again, nor at the upper echelons of business or government. For someone who viewed himself as a corporate visionary, as Zahn did, that is a personally devastating punishment all its own.

For the rest, Davis has a fateful decision to make.

Nate Monroe is a Florida columnist for the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU. Email him at nmonroe@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: In urging leniency, ex-JEA CEO Aaron Zahn tells his own story | Commentary