One of Brooklyn’s most notorious judges went from posh dinners to the promise of prison Thursday as a jury convicted former Supreme Court Justice Gerald P. Garson of three felonies.

After nearly two full days of deliberation, the jury decided that Garson was guilty of a third-degree count of taking a bribe and two second-degree counts of receiving reward for official misconduct. The conviction carries a maximum sentence of 15-years in prison.

Those three charges stemmed directly or indirectly from videotaped evidence filmed during a 2003 wire-tapping operation in Garson’s chambers. The jury watched as Garson accepted $1,000 and a box of cigars from Paul Siminovsky, a divorce lawyer who regularly fraternized in Garson’s chambers, bought the judge $10,000 worth of dinners and drinks in exchange for ex parte advice, and ultimately wore a wire as part of a plea deal with the Brooklyn DA’s office.

While the disgraced judge fled the courthouse without speaking to the press, Garson’s defense attorney Michael S. Washor bitterly denounced Siminovsky while vowing to appeal. “I don’t apologize to Paul Siminovsky,” he said, “just like I wouldn’t apologize to Hitler or Saddam Hussein.”

The lead prosecutor, Michael F. Vecchione, grinned when he spoke of the filmed evidence that won his conviction. He called the tape “academy award winning”— a jab at Washor’s opening statements that compared the hidden-camera evidence to “a bad B-movie.”

Vecchione said that the DA’s probe of judicial misconduct was ongoing. “Any message that was sent was sent with the indictment,” he explained. “People have to do what’s right, whether you’re a judge or an ordinary citizen.”

The entire investigation began when a pregnant mother named Frieda Hanimov went to the Brooklyn DA, alleging that Garson’s crooked activities were marring her divorce proceedings.

In a telephone interview minutes after the verdict was released, she literally shouted with joy.

“I’m so happy that finally we got justice,” she said. “More judges need to be investigated because the court system is corrupt.”

Hanimov is part of an informal coalition of mothers who have or have had divorces pending in the matrimonial courts. She claimed that Garson was just the tip of the iceberg. “I’m getting tons of calls and emails every day about corruption in the court system,” she said.

The bribery trial had lasted more than one month, as the jury watched a series of videotapes and listened to transcripts from the judicial corruption probe. Every step of the way, Washor accused the DA’s office of entrapping Garson in an unfair case.

During the two-day deliberations, the jury requested to hear a number of read-backs and watched the video of Garson accepting a box of cigars from Siminovsky. While the two sides squabbled over how best to present the information, state Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Berry told everybody to slow down.

“This is like flying into JFK,” he quipped about the demanding lawyers. “I’ve got on my screen five potential airliners that want to land in this courtroom, and I’m taking them one at a time.”

At one point Wednesday, the tired jury passed a note asking if the verdict needed to be unanimous. Justice Berry explained that they needed to unanimously vote for both “guilty” and “not guilty” verdicts. This note led some court watchers to speculate that the trial could end in a hung jury mistrial.

“Congratulations, gentlemen. Congratulations,” Washor muttered to the prosecution immediately after the verdict was read. Garson stared blankly at the defense table, sagging in his seat.

Washor then demanded that the jury read a roll call of their verdict, making each juror personally affirm the verdict, searching their faces for clues to the conviction.

Sentencing was scheduled for June 5th. Berry allowed the former judge to return home until that date, without raising the bail. He ordered Garson to report to a probation officer once a week until sentencing.

27 YEARS FOR FREEDOM
A contentious 27-year court battle over housing segregation in the Bronx finally ended in a settlement yesterday. The lawsuit, filed by the NAACP, focused on 800 units of public housing in predominately white east Yonkers that were intended to house minorities but were bitterly contested by the city government. A larger issue was the borough’s pattern of racial discrimination in its housing policies, which Justice Sand exposed in a ruling against Yonkers in 1985 that seemed to pave the way for a settlement, only for the City Council to opt for a long, expensive legal showdown. The New York Times tells how Supreme Court Justice Leonard B. Sand – who has presided over the case since its inception, when he’d been on the bench for only a year – will review the final settlement in early May. “Any efforts not to comply with the law are counterproductive to the image of the community and its well-being.” Justice Sand said. “The millions and millions of dollars that the City of Yonkers has spent” in this litigation “could have gone to better things for the community.”


V IS FOR VACCO, V IS FOR VENDETTA
An Albany judge allowed a state oversight agency investigating the activities of a lobbying firm led by former state Attorney General Dennis Vacco to carry out a subpoena issued to the firm’s attorney, even though there’s evidence to suspect he’s the victim of a personal vendetta by the state agency’s executive director, David Grandeau. As reported in The Buffalo News, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi ruled that Crane and Vacco’s attorney, James Crane (the husband of Constance Crane, Vacco’s business partner) must oblige the subpoena because his vendetta claim is “irrelevant to the issue of whether or not the subpoena is enforceable” and because the state lobbying commission may proceed with its probe as long as the material being sought is relevant to its investigation. As reported by The News, this week investigators from the commission recommended $325,000 in fines against Vacco’s firm over allegations that it entered into an illegal contingency-fee arrangement with a Rochester businessman seeking to build casinos with an Oklahoma Indian tribe. Last year, the Albany County District Attorney cleared the Vacco firm of any wrongdoing.