'I Have a Judge in My Pocket'

Lisa Cohen remembers feeling doomed when she heard her divorce case would go before Judge Gerald Garson.

As she testified yesterday at the Brooklyn bribery trial of two of the judge's former court employees, Ms. Cohen told jurors a close friend of her husband's had boasted special ties to the judge.

The friend, she testified, said: "I have a judge in my pocket. Judge Garson."

The testimony of Ms. Cohen, a 39-yearold product manager with two daughters, helped put a human face for jurors on a sprawling and complex alleged divorce-fixing scheme in Brooklyn. Prosecutors say husbands tried, through a series of intermediaries, to buy favorable settlements from Judge Garson.

Along with Sigal Levi, another displeased ex-wife who testified yesterday, Ms. Cohen described a courtroom where one lawyer had unfettered access to the judge.

According to prosecutors, the lawyer, Paul Siminovsky, gave Judge Garson cash, cigars, and treated him to meals to win favorable treatment and lucrative case appointments. Mr. Siminovsky represented both women's husbands.

"He would roam in and out...he had free run," Ms. Cohen testified. "The courtroom was exactly like a circus."

She said Mr. Siminovsky also was "exceptionally friendly" with Judge Garson's court clerk and court officer.

The two men, Paul Sarnell and Louis Salerno, are charged with taking cash and electronics in exchange for bypassing the normal assignment system and steering new cases directly to the judge.

Judge Garson is awaiting trial on a charge of felony bribe receiving.

Mr. Siminovsky eventually cooperated with prosecutors and helped orchestrate a videotaped sting in which Judge Garson is shown accepting $1,000 in cash and a box of expensive cigars from the lawyer.

The tapes played also show the judge giving the lawyer detailed instructions on how to win the Levi case.

Ms. Levi, whose divorce case had not been finalized by the time of Judge Garson's arrest in 2003, described hearing the two men joking around behind closed doors.

"They were laughing so loudly and talking about lunches and horse races that everyone heard it," she testified. "It was like everybody knew every body...it was like buddies."

Jurors also heard more evidence about Nissim Elmann, the man who allegedly recruited the women's husbands for the scheme.

Mr. Elmann, a Crown Heights electronics dealer who boasted of his connections to the judge, kept files with pictures of women's children and court records related to their cases.

An investigator for the prosecutors acknowledged yesterday that Mr. Elmann often "embellished" and claimed that he often met with the judge when he had not. A defense lawyer for Mr. Sarnell repeatedly called Mr. Elmann a liar.

The lawyer, Dominic Amorosa, also suggested Mr. Siminovsky had pressured Mr. Sarnell into committing a crime while prosecutors eavesdropped on their conversations and said that his client had paid for items that allegedly were bribes.

Ms. Cohen testified that, just before the start of her divorce began, her husband bought two plane tickets to Florida for Mr. Sarnell with his credit card.