An ex-radical turned political insider has begun overseeing Brooklyn’s most hardboiled courtroom drama of the year, a surreal mafia bench trial in which the storied judge might prove as fascinating as the case itself.

Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach was robeless on Monday, wearing civvies with a decided flair. Sporting a polka-dot tie and a powder blue handkerchief in his breast pocket, he leaned forward intently as attorneys delivered opening arguments.

After all, it’s not often that any venue hosts a trial involving an FBI agent accused of helping the mob make murder plans.

In an unusual move, the judge opened his courtroom to video and still cameras, filling the empty jury box with a pool photographer and videocamerman. A line of journalists sat in the row behind them, with every other seat in the courtoom filled.

Above his bench, Reichbach has installed a red and blue neon sculpture of the scales of justice — a marked contrast to the institutional paneling typically found in Brooklyn courtrooms.

The image neatly encapsulates the two sides of Reichbach: a onetime renegade who became an institutional favorite — currying favor with the influential party boss, Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, with a move now embedded in New York legal and political history.


In the mid-1990’s Justice Reichbach hired Vito Lopez’s daughter as his law secretary.

The vocational status of Gina M. Lopez Summa (now a state Court of Claims Judge) was central to López Torres v. New York State Board of Elections. That lawsuit was brought by Margarita López Torres, a disgruntled judicial candidate (since elected to the post of Surrogate) who claimed she was unconstitutionally denied access to the ballot by a system that made patronage the currency of an inherently corrupt nomination process.

In the landmark decision that overturned that system, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson lingered over Assemblyman Lopez’s attempts to persuade Civil Court Judge Margarita López Torres to hire his daughter: “[I]f she hired Lopez’s daughter, a recent law school graduate, as her court attorney, Lopez would get López Torres nominated to fill an upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court that the party leadership had earmarked for a ‘Latino.’ ”

A later Gleeson footnote added: “Lopez’s daughter was hired by another Civil Court judge in Brooklyn, who was subsequently nominated and elected to the office of Supreme Court Justice.”

Although Gleeson never named the judge, Lopez Summa’s resume on the Unified Court System website reveals that she worked as a law secretary to two Civil Court judges who were elevated to the Supreme Court: Justice Marsha L. Steinhardt and Justice Reichbach.

Asked about the Gleeson note in an interview on Tuesday, Justice Reichbach raised his voice:  “The fact of the matter is that the federal judiciary is the least representative judiciary in the country — you have an unelected judge appointed by the President. Judge Gleeson is holding forth on the undemocratic nature of an elective political system, and I think that’s pretty ironic.”

Making no apology for the nature of partisan dealmaking, Justice Reichbach expressed admiration for the party boss and his pursuit of diversity. “As a result of [Lopez’s] leadership there is a significant representation of Hispanic leaders on the bench,” said Reichbach.  “Politics is inseparable from the third branch of government, just like it’s inseparable from the first branch. The question is who are you going to trust with that decision?”

Vito Lopez has previously denied the overlapping allegations of patronage and nepotism, but he did not return phone calls for comment. Court of Claims Judge Lopez Summa, also did not return calls.

As the FBI agent trial opened Monday, Reichbach breezed through opening arguments without wasting a word. He occasionally asked a brief question, and seemed captivated by both attorneys during three hours of arguments.

Former FBI Agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio stands accused of aiding in four mafia murders during the late 1980’s and 1990’s. In a surprising twist, the former agent has placed his fate entirely in Reichbach’s hands — forgoing a jury trial and electing to not recuse the judge, despite Reichbach having been monitored by the FBI during his college days.

Perhaps that is due to Reichach’s reputation for being a bit friendlier to the defense than the average jurist. But any such predilection did not stop him from rapping the defense team’s knuckles at the first opportunity.

The neon dandy judge broke out of his eccentric, pleasant demeanor when a cellphone rang underneath the defense table. He quickly kicked out the defense attorney’s assistant after the device beeped twice. “I’ll be very unhappy if that happens again,” he warned.

Asked abut the judge’s defense-friendly reputation, attorney Robert A. Soloway reflected on a hung jury verdict he received in Reichbach’s courtroom in the 2005 case, People v. Woolcock.

A name partner at Rothman, Schneider, Soloway & Stern, he seconded the view but added quickly, “You shouldn’t do anything to alienate him. You have to realize he’s not a judge who’s looking to kill you in there.”

Another defense attorney, solo practitioner Frederick S. Spiegel of Brooklyn, has had at least six criminal trials in front of the judge, and he disputed the unalloyed perception: “I don’t think he’s pro-prosecution, as sometimes a lot of judges are. But I wouldn’t say pro-defense. Any judge who’s not pro-prosecution gets a reputation for being pro-defense.”

On another element of the judge’s performance, Soloway noted that the judge moved the case more quickly than he had wanted. His trial ended with a hung jury, but a new jury convicted his former client in Reichbach’s courtroom on the re-trial — with a new attorney leading the defense.

Statistically, this efficiency keeps Reichbach’s courtroom running at higher levels than the average Brooklyn courtroom. In 2005, he spent 212 days on the bench and disposed of 62 cases. Those figures are both above average for a judge in Brooklyn's Trial Part, where the median is 210 days with 33 cases disposed.

Beyond the observations about pacing, Soloway concluded by urging attorneys to step aside once the judge rules. “Don’t carry on like a lunatic when he rules against you — he doesn’t respond to that very well. He’s a guy that listens and lets you say what you say. But once he rules, you better get on with it.”

Earlier this year Reichbach and his liberal tendencies made headlines in a major acquittal.

Defendant Lonnie Jones appealed the 37-years-to-life conviction that he received in 2002 for a shooting murder, and ended up in Reichbach’s courtroom after the Appellate Division, Second Department reversed the conviction. A new jury acquitted, and Reichbach overturned the sentence and released him, citing the unreliability of an eyewitness.

Carey R. Dunne, a white-collar criminal attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell, handled Jones’s defense pro bono. A former Assistant District Attorney himself, Dunne dismissed any claims that prosecutors would dislike Reichbach.

“I would not have complained if I was on the ADA side [with Reichbach], and I’d be very surprised if the ADA in my case did either,” he said. “Despite what might be a reputation for looking out for the interests of the defense, I thought he was very fair.”

Overall, the appellate court would appear to agree.

Between 2000 and 2005, Reichbach's criminal reversal rate was 6.4 percent — more than  5 points below the Second Department average of 11.7 percent reversals. He was reversed by the Appellate Division, Second Department once on a suppression hearing, and his rulings were modified twice by the same appellate body (Judicial Reports counts such modifications as reversals).

Dunne also appreciated the judge’s “ennobling” attention to jurors. “One thing I noted was that he was extremely interested in making it clear to the jurors and how important that they were. His voir dire was the best I’d ever seen.”

RADICAL YOUTH

Reichbach attended Columbia University School of Law in the late 1960’s, where he was an outspoken leader in the Students for a Democratic Society anti-war group. That membership caught the eye of the FBI, and Justice Reichbach admitted during pre-trial motions in the DeVecchio case that the file had targeted him as a “dangerous” student leader.

After graduating in 1970, he worked as a university professor at Brooklyn College and then as counsel for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

He spent the late 1980’s in private practice. In New York, he practiced housing law before being elected to the Civil Court in 1991. That year he had secured the influential backing of Assemblyman Vito Lopez — who was then a rising, but not established, Democratic leader — and his campaign succeeded against the mainstream party powers.

“To the organization at the time I wasn’t the man from the moon, I was the man from Pluto,” the judge recalled.

During his early years as a judge, Reichbach generated reams of headlines for his practice of handing out condoms to prostitutes and drug users who came through his courtroom — earning him a tabloid moniker as, “The Condom Judge.”

“I like to characterize myself as innovative rather than liberal,” said the judge. “I think history has absolved me. It was used by the tabloids as a sign of derision, but I wore it as a badge of honor.”

 In 2003, he made international headlines as he took a prestigious eight-month posting as a visiting criminal judge in Kosovo. Along with an international cast of jurists, he heard criminal cases in the war-torn provinces of the former Yugoslavia.

Ironically, the judge was labeled a disciplinarian for doling out a sentence in a weapons trial that involved rockets, mines, and submachine guns.

“Their attitude about weapons is much more casual than ours,” he said. “In the end I had to persuade them that this was a case that deserved some jail time — 2-to-3 years seemed a tremendously long time for them.”

Similarly, the judge makes no apologies to would-be domestic reformers for his defense political status quo.

 “It’s a misnomer to say that one [system] yields merit and the other does not,” he said. “I acknowledge that the electoral system has its faults, but just because sometimes it produces a bad result it doesn’t mean we should throw out whole system.”