The New York Daily News
Nov. 26, 1991

Gang Land Column
By Jerry Capeci

Judge Has Axe To Grind

Call him the grudge judge.

The public -- the reading, listening and viewing public -- is paying for a 50-year-old beef that Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser has held against the press since he worked, briefly, for a newspaper.

This revelation comes not from informed Gang Land sources but from Glasser himself, who is presiding over the pending murder and racketeering case U.S. vs. John Gotti and Frank (Frankie Loc) LoCascio.

Last week, at a scheduled pre-trial proceeding in the case, Glasser blasted the press, saying he sometimes reads newspaper stories about his cases and wonders "whether I was even present at the proceedings being reported on."

During the Gotti proceeding, according to the official transcript. Glasser said his bad feelings about the press arose in 1941, when his city editor at the old Journal American tried to embarrass Millicent Hearst, the publisher's wife, by proving that milk given away for her pet project, Free Milk Fund for Babies, "had germs in it."

After the paper stole bottles of milk off front stoops, analyzed them and learned the milk was germ-free, said Glasser, "The city editor's reply was, 'God damn it. I want germs in the milk."'

That may be true, but none of it gave the judge the right to move the proceeding from his courtroom to his chambers and exclude the nine newspaper, television and radio reporters assigned to cover the proceeding.

In case after case, the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled that, absent extreme circumstances, court proceedings -- including pre-trial ones -- should be open to the public.

A few years back, when Manhattan Federal Judge Shirley Wohl Kram announced that she was moving a pre-trial proceeding of two drug defendants into her chambers, a Daily News reporter asked her to reconsider. Kram said no, but invited the reporter into chambers to cover the proceeding.

Several times during the recent Windows labor racketeering trial in Brooklyn, when Judge Raymond Dearie questioned jurors in his chambers, he allowed one or two pool reporters to attend.

Kram and Dearie were not being nice to reporters, they were upholding the law and protecting the rights of the public -- the newspaper readers, radio listeners and television viewers -- to know what's going on.

When Glasser was handed a note, requesting, at a minimum, that he allow a pool reporter to attend the conference, he refused, telling the assembled lawyers and prosecutors: "I don't think it is a media event."

It certainly wasn't. It was a pre-trial proceeding in one of the most important New York stories of the decade, the fourth indictment in five years against John Gotti, a reputed boss of the largest Mafia family in the country who has beaten prosecutors the first three times.

Already, the U.S. attorney's office has received scores of calls from reporters from all over the world who plan to cover the trial. Whether Glasser likes it or not, they will come.

Instead of trying to obstruct press coverage of the case, Glasser should plan to move the case from his courtroom, which holds about 100 spectators, to a large, ceremonial one on the second floor that can accommodate about 400.

Another culprit in this sorry situation was the so-called people's lawyer, U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney.

Despite Justice Department guidelines dictating that the "government has a general overriding affirmative duty to oppose closure" of court proceedings, Maloney stood mute when Glasser locked out the press.

Called by Gang Land yesterday, Maloney said he wasn't sure about the guidelines and declined comment.

The guidelines, which apply to all federal proceedings, read, in part: "The government should take a position on any motion to close a judicial proceeding, and should ordinarily oppose closure; it should move for or consent to closed proceedings only when closure is plainly essential to the interests of justice."