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2 Judge-Picking Dems Quit Panel As Grand Jury Turns up the Heat

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2 Judge-Picking Dems Quit Panel As Grand Jury Turns up the Heat Find a new home or a new job — in The Brooklyn Classifieds INSIDE BROOKLYN’S WEEKLY NEWSPAPER Including The Downtown News, Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill Paper and Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Paper Dinner or a spa for Mom’s Day Published weekly by Brooklyn Paper Publications Inc, 26 Court St., Brooklyn 11242 Phone 718-834-9350 AD fax 718-834-1713 • NEWS fax 718-834-9278 © 2003 Brooklyn Paper Publications • 16 pages including GO BROOKLYN • Vol.26, No. 19 BWN • May 12, 2003 • FREE 2 judge-picking Dems quit panel as grand jury turns up the heat By Patrick Gallahue The Brooklyn Papers Two longtime members of the Brooklyn ANOTHER B’KLYN Democratic Party’s judicial screening panel abandoned ship on Tuesday as calls for reform got louder and a special grand jury’s investigation into the judicial selec- JUDGE IS AXED tion process moved forward. Barry Kamins and George Farkas, both Court lord $15,000 in back rent. By Patrick Gallahue Street attorneys, resigned from the screening The Commission on Judicial Con- The Brooklyn Papers panel, with Farkas saying the screening panel duct ordered Mason removed from Capping an already horrific week the bench in June and the Court of was “flawed.” for the borough’s judiciary, the state Appeals supported the decision on “I believe that certain people’s participation in Court of Appeals on Thursday ordered May 1. the committee itself leaves the committee sub- Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice The commission report had noted ject to potential criticism,” Farkas told The Reynold Mason to step down. that Mason was uncooperative during Callan / Tom Brooklyn Papers. “And the bottom line being, I Mason, 52, had been accused of il- the investigation and “that he failed to believe, the entire system of selections has very legally subletting his apartment for 10 respond to six letters seeking his re- serious flaws in it. And the screening committee years to his brother-in-law, depositing sponse to the allegation of misconduct.” happens to be part of the system.” the money paid to him into an escrow Paul Gentile, Mason’s attorney, did He declined to name anyone he believed did / Tom Callan / Tom not belong on the screening panel. account and refusing to give the land- See ANOTHER JUDGE on page 5 Papers The Brooklyn “A number of things have occurred, a lot of it Democratic boss Clarence Norman in the public eye, some of it which will come (above) addresses party faithful in the into the public eye, such as who gets inter- Marriott after protestors, some dressed viewed and what a particular applicant is enti- in judges robes, rallied outside. The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn tled to before being interviewed,” said Farkas. BRIBE JUDGE CASES After Civil Court Judge Margarita Lopez Tor- res was shunted aside for an interview last year with the screening panel because she hadn’t ARE UNDER REVIEW been referred by the county leader, Assembly- man Clarence Norman, two members threatened The Brooklyn Papers Protest at Dem dinner The state Office of Court Adminis- to leave the panel. With District Attorney Charles tration has even set up a hotline for By Patrick Gallahue This year’s dinner, however, featured The protest was organized by Alan “I’ll let you guess who those were,” he said, people to report suspicious verdicts. Hynes building a case against The Brooklyn Papers factions holding separate events and the Fleishman and Liz Daly, state commit- hinting that it was he and Kamins. “As of the time of the arraignment Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge dinner itself was greeted with a protest tee members, also known as district Lopez Torres has claimed that she has been at there were under 10 cases that we’ve What a difference a year makes. from a group of elected officials and ex- leaders, of the 52nd Assembly District odds with the county party ever since she refused Gerald Garson for allegedly ac- identified as being improperly routed cepting gifts to fix divorce cases, While last year’s Kings County De- ecutive committee members. The protes- of Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights. to hire a legal secretary referred to her by Norman, to Judge Garson,” said David Book- mocratic Committee dinner featured a tors waved placards outside the New Among the 20 or so to attend the and in another instance, one referred by Bushwick court overseers have turned their staver, a spokesman for the Office of few intentional absences by reformers attention to the disgraced jurist’s York Marriott Brooklyn Thursday night, protest rally were Brooklyn Heights Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a party loyalist. Court Administration. There have been and party dissidents, the party stood gen- Councilman David Yassky and Park Lopez Torres once again declared her candi- past rulings. reading, “Order in the Courts” and “Jus- See UNDER REVIEW on page 5 erally united and fired back at criticism. tice is not a family affair.” See DINNER PROTEST on page 5 See QUIT on page 5 Sloper sues ‘Prez’ Sheen Filmmaker cites ‘West Wing’ actor, claiming theft of script By Deborah Kolben The Brooklyn Papers A Park Slope filmmaker is creating some real life drama — he’s filed suit against the President of the United States (or at least the man who plays him on TV). Sitting on a bench outside Oz- / Brad Horrigan zie’s coffee shop on Seventh Avenue, Tomislav Novakovic, a Croatian-born director and screen- writer, explained the lawsuit, which seeks damages against, among others, the actor Martin Sheen. Papers The Brooklyn “After seeing many films Croatian-born Tomislav No- come out of that part of the world vakovic in Park Slope / Brad Horrigan with men in military fatigues shooting each other, I wanted to director was filming a movie star- write about a female character ring Martin Sheen that sounded that refuses to become a victim of remarkably similar to one he had tragedy,” said Novakovic, who penned, Novakovic got himself a / Nick Ut The Brooklyn Papers The Brooklyn may have become a victim of a lawyer. tragedy of another kind. In Novakovic’s lawsuit, filed When Novakovic learned from in Manhattan Supreme Court, he Blossoms in bloom a cover story in Gloria magazine claims that director Jakov Sedlar Loan Nguyen takes a photo of her grandsons Pen and Peter Nguyen on a Japanese Flowering Cherry Associated Press — the Eastern European equiva- stole his screenplay after reading at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Cherry blossoms peaked last week. Actor Martin Sheen at an anti-war vigil in Los Angeles on March 26. lent of People — that a Croatian See SUE SHEEN on page 7 19th-century ‘Eagle’ morgue comes alive online By Patrick Gallahue “The Eagle online will offer patrons a new The site was paid for with a $239,000 grant The Brooklyn Papers widow into history,” said Brooklyn Public Li- from the Institute for Museum and Library EXCLUSIVE brary executive director Ginnie Cooper. Services and was constructed by the Brooklyn The fragile pages of the Brooklyn Eagle, The Web site, which the library is still test- The Web site features editions from January Public Library with Online Computer Library once threatened by age at the Brooklyn Pub- ing, but which The Brooklyn Papers got an 1841 through December 1902, that are, incred- Center, a nonprofit research organization. lic Library, are now preserved in cyberspace. exclusive look at this week, also captures the ibly, keyword searchable. There are also spe- The digitization of the Brooklyn Eagle was Under headlines such as “An Aggressive freshness of Brooklyn’s evolving narrative cial compilations by subject for African-Amer- performed concurrently with an expansion Campaign: Women Suffragists Are Forging 150 years ago, including the opening ball of ican History, BAM, the Brooklyn Bridge, and upgrade to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Right Along” and “Plymouth Church and the the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1861; the consolidation, the draft riots, Walt Whitman Brooklyn Collection, which includes archives Slavery Question” the pages offer a fascinat- inauguration of the Brooklyn Bridge on May and more. When a particular edition is ac- of maps, books and records dating back to ing glimpse into the then-contemporary past 24, 1883 and Brooklyn’s transformation from cessed, readers can browse the front page and pre-colonial times. of Brooklyn in the vernacular of the times. city to borough on Jan. 1, 1898. select clips from the newspapers of the day. The collection has served as a resource to writers, historians and the filmmakers Ken and Ric Burns, who used it in the making of their classic documentaries “New York, a Documentary Film” and “Baseball.” Former Borough President Howard Golden allocated Firehouse panel a rubber stamp $3.9 million towards a consolidation of the original newspapers into a single climate- controlled reading room. By Patrick Gallahue and Brooklyn borough commander, was an met for five or six hours. The Web site is expected to be running The Brooklyn Papers appointee of Council Speaker Gifford Miller “You didn’t even spend an hour a house,” normally by September. The cost to access to the panel. He told the council’s Fire and said Councilwoman Yvette Clarke, of Flat- the site, if any, is still being determined, a Members of the blue-ribbon panel that Mango / Greg Criminal Justice Committee that despite sug- bush, who chairs the committee. BPL spokeswoman said. was convened to investigate whether the gesting alternatives “the vote was pro forma.” On April 7, the panel voted to shutter the “This is an unbelievable way for Brook- mayor really needed to close eight fire- The council’s other appointee to the pan- eight firehouses, five of which are in Brook- lynites, and people all around the world, to houses told the City Council on Monday el, Glenn Corbett, an assistant professor of lyn.
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