Pubdate: Mon, 1 Feb 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A12 of the New York edition
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Kareem Fahim
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Michael+Mineo

AMID DRAMA OF POLICE TRIAL, A JUDGE UNFAZED

The afternoon court session grew more heated in its final hour.
Michael Mineo, who prosecutors say was sodomized with a police
officer's baton during a stop, faced tough questions about the extent
of his injuries and whether he remembered the color of his blood.

In the middle of that critical testimony, a lawyer for the officer
requested a recess. Justice Alan D. Marrus waved him off.

The lawyer asked again. "I must go, judge," he said, suggesting that
it was nature and not strategy guiding the request. Then he caught a
break: The court reporter needed to change paper. So Justice Marrus
grudgingly agreed to do what he had been loath to in his 24 years on
the bench in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn: slow down the action.

"Go ahead," he told the lawyer with a resigned shrug.

It is not that Justice Marrus, 63, is impatient, or does not believe
in breaks, he said later in an interview.

"I try to run a trial on a schedule, and have a plan," he said. "The
jurors seem to like that, too."

Justice Marrus arrives at the courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn at 7
a.m. and is usually sitting in his courtroom before the day's
proceedings begin. "I don't make an entrance," he said.

He tells lawyers not to show up late, and has been known to warn that
if they do, he might seat the jurors without them. He often brushes
off requests for sidebars, saying that most of the discussions can be
public; but he also does it, lawyers suspect, because the sessions
take up precious time.

Since 1986, by his clerk's count, Justice Marrus has heard more than
550 cases. "He's probably tried more cases than most trial judges in
the city, if not the state," said Barry M. Kamins, the administrative
judge for criminal matters in the Second Judicial District of New
York. "He runs a tight ship. And he keeps things moving very quickly."

The latest case for Justice Marrus, which started more than a week
ago, is a high-profile police brutality trial in which Officer Richard
Kern is accused of repeatedly ramming a retractable baton between Mr.
Mineo's buttocks in the Prospect Park subway station and two other
officers are accused of helping cover up the abuse.

On Monday, the judge will preside over what may be the trial's most
critical moments: A transit police officer, Kevin Maloney, is expected
to break ranks and testify that he saw Officer Kern jab Mr. Mineo with
his baton.

Surrounded by lawyers with outsize personalities, and confronted with
an accuser whose testimony involved screaming and showing off tattoos,
Justice Marrus has presided with a steady hand, unruffled by the drama
or the public attention. He has warmed jurors each morning with a joke
("I'm still waiting to be discovered," he said), smiled when lawyers
made grand stands and calmed nervous witnesses.

"Can I let my heart beat for a second?" asked one witness, Ashley
Loney, a friend of Mr. Mineo's. Let it beat for longer than that,
Justice Marrus said.

The judge's smile disappeared when lawyers or prosecutors argued with
witnesses or made lazy attempts to score points with jurors. "That was
a bad question," he said one day. "Come up with a good question."

Smile or no smile, the days have unfolded with precision: Court starts
shortly after 10 a.m. and ends between 4 and 5 p.m. Everyone is off on
Fridays.

Not everyone appreciates the judge's efficiency. A lawyer who has
appeared before Justice Marrus several times and who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because he expected to appear before him again,
said that in tamping down lawyers' "flowery" tendencies, the judge can
stifle their efforts to connect with jurors. "He wants to get right to
the point," the lawyer said.

But other lawyers praised the judge's economy. Nicholas Gravante Jr.
was trying a case before Justice Marrus during the Sept. 11 attack.
"His ability to keep the jury together through that very difficult
ordeal, and complete the trial in an efficient manner, was one of the
most remarkable things I've seen," Mr. Gravante said. "As a criminal
defense lawyer, he allowed me to try my case."

Punctuality was a lesson that Justice Marrus said he learned early,
from his mother, Sara Marrus, who told him, "It was inconsiderate to
keep people waiting for you." He was 13 when Mrs. Marrus moved her
family from Mount Vernon, N.Y., to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, after her
husband died.

Young Alan chose law in his junior high school career book, and that
was that. After Brooklyn College and George Washington University Law
School, he became the first lawyer in his family, then a prosecutor.
In 1983, he was appointed to Manhattan Criminal Court as a judge.

Justice Marrus raised two children in the Manhattan Beach neighborhood
of Brooklyn, not far from where he grew up; his daughter is a federal
prosecutor, and his son is in law school. His wife of 38 years, Iris,
is a singer and teaches how to incorporate music in early childhood
education at Kingsborough Community College and Lehman College.

Those who know the judge call him a thoughtful jurist who trains new
judges, lectures extensively and shows confidence in his legal
rulings. Last year, in one such ruling, Justice Marrus harshly rebuked
a mother who tried to prove her son's innocence by seducing one of the
jurors in the son's murder trial.

In his forceful ruling, he said the mother, Doreen Giuliano, had been
"acting as a self-appointed juror misconduct vigilante, with the
obvious intention to destroy the credibility of a jury verdict that
went against her son."

In his spare time, Justice Marrus coaches the judges' softball team
and writes comedy routines -- for a friend and former judge who
performs stand-up or as M.C. of events like a statewide judges' seminar.

He has become known for the novel way he picks juries, using a
technique he developed in 1986, when Joseph Pepitone, a former Yankee,
sat in his court on drugs charges. "He was very famous at the time,"
Justice Marrus recalled. "We figured it would be hard to get jurors
right away." In that case and in many high-profile cases since,
including the current one, the judge prescreened jurors, speeding up
the process.

The jury in Mr. Mineo's case was picked in less than three
hours.

Apart from the lawyer's bathroom request, the judge has looked
impatient only one other time -- again, during a break he did not
foresee. He paced at the bench for a minute, then started chatting
with a witness.

One day, as a prosecutor began questioning a witness, an undercover
investigator, the action moved so fast that Justice Marrus realized he
had forgotten something: the jury.

It was not entirely his fault. It was a closed court session, and the
judge seemed preoccupied with special arrangements he had made to
secure the courtroom and make sure the news media could see the
proceedings.

"We became so security conscious that we forgot to bring out the
jury," he said, chuckling with embarrassment. "I've never done that
before." 
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