A court judge is out to get me.
Okay, that’s not true, he’s probably just doing his job.
But I FEEL like he’s out to get me.
The judge in question is Judge Ernest DiSantis, a former federal prosecutor and Assistant District Attorney that I’ve known professionally for some twenty years.
The case in question is Commonwealth vs Filippi et al, as in former Mayor Rick Filippi et al.
As you may have heard, the former mayor and two other attorneys are charged with using inside information from public office in an attempt to buy property near a proposed race track.
When the story broke, the group dissolved and sold their assets and eventually the project went elsewhere but the damage had been done.
The Attorney General’s office brought charges in December of 2004.
In deciding to move the trial from Erie to Washington County, Judge DiSantis noted that he had never seen the ferocity of pre-trial publicity that this case had generated.
Indeed, there were days when it seemed like the Mayor’s “land deals” were the only news in town.
That led the judge to issue a gag order precluding attorneys or other officers of the court from talking to the media about the case.
Normally that means no on-camera interviews but attorneys usually can still tell reporters when hearings will take place or what motions were filed without commenting on them.
Not this time.
Apparently Judge DiSantis did such a good job convincing the parties of his determination to protect the integrity of the proceedings that people I’ve known for decades won’t talk to me.
About anything.
Secretaries call me back to tell me that their bosses can’t come to the phone to tell me that they can’t talk to me.
Now that’s a gag order.
Before you start clapping in glee over a reporter forced to chase down every filed document personally, remember that one of my primary jobs is to keep you informed about how your tax dollars are being spent.
We don’t have secret police, or secret courts, without there being an overriding reason to deny the public access to what public servants are doing in a public process.
With a jury set to be picked well out of the viewing area, just what part of the trial’s integrity is this gag order protecting?
Am I a little frustrated that I have to do everything the hard way?
Okay, yes.
Should the courts be worried about my annoyances?
Okay, maybe not.
But the media coverage is causing a lot of inconvenience for the system in this case, and you can’t help but wonder if there are those in the system getting a small bit of satisfaction knowing that the result of that publicity is causing hassles for the people who helped create it.