By Matthew Russell Lee
FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, March 11 – In the U.S. District Court for the DC Circuit on March 11, a jury heard a series of audio tapes records from phone calls by defendant Anthony Fields while in D.C. Department of Corrections custody. Judge Amit P. Mehta told the jury to only consider the calls against those who were identified on them by the Special Agent on the witness stand, and to not speculate on or give weight to Mr. Fields having been in custory. Courtroom 10 on the fourth floor of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse was full of lawyers and defendant but, it appears, no media other than Inner City Press which could not help compare proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
There, for example in the US v Cammarano racketeering trial in which summations began on the morning of March 11, the jury was handed transcripts of the audio recordings played. This was not matched in DC - but the DC District allows electronics in and use of media room and Internet. In Courtroom 25 before Judge James E. Boasberg, a seemingly routine status proceeding suddenly went sealed, with even the prosecutor stepping out; courtroom 11 of Judge Tanya S. Chutna also had something listed as "Sealed" on 11 am. We'll have more on all this. In the rackeeting trial of Joe Cammarano and John Zancocchio in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York the afternoon of March 4 ended with government witness Stephen Sabella being questioned about racist Facebook posts and a scar his step-brother left on his head. Stephen Sabella testified that the defendant John Zancocchio gave him a black eye and a broken tooth and stole his busienss from him, some $2 million in all.
"I can't stand him," Stephen Sabella said. But he went beyond that, and posted on Zancocchio's daughter's Facebook wall insults against her bi-racial daughter. He called Zancocchio himself a "stuttering MF-er;" Zancocchio's lawyer referred to "my client's disability." He cross examined: you know her from Bella Mama Rose, right? She's a good person, right? Judge Alvin Hellerstein sustained an objected by Stephen Sabella managed to work into his response, yes she is a nice person. He said he wasn't sure how Facebook worked, how many people saw his posts.
