The Bipolar Judge

Like the wise guys whose trials they preside over, judges often acquire nicknames or labels based on the way they act on the bench. There are hanging judges and bleeding heart judges, judges who are viewed as tough, and those seen as soft on crime.And now, sitting in Brooklyn, there’s a new breed of jurist – the bipolar judge.Last week, Judge Frederic Block had heads spinning in federal court in Brooklyn with remarks he uttered at the sentencings of two mobsters that seemed to start at the North Pole on one day and end at the South Pole a day later.Judge Block ripped the government as “soft on the mob” for giving ailing 76-year-old Luchese soldier Frank “Frankie Pearl” Federico a plea bargain of 15 years in jail for the slayings of two private carting company executives in 1989. If he lives, Federico, who suffers from heart disease, would be 88 when he is released.Apparently upset by a Daily News columnist’s observation last month that Judge Block “had a soft spot for the mob,” the judge took his anger out on Assistant U. S. Attorney William Gurin, demanding that the prosecutor justify the deal, even though the judge had approved it last March.In the end, Judge Block said that although Federico’s advanced age and serious heart problems made it unlikely Frankie Pearl would survive his sentence, he would have preferred that the gangster have no hope of ever getting out of prison.The following day, Judge Block seemed to have forgotten the words he uttered 24 hours earlier, and reverted to his previous form when mobster Jerome Brancato, also 76, appeared for sentencing for a labor-racketeering conviction following a contentious three- month trial.In prior sessions, Judge Block had given lower sentences than those called for by the sentencing guidelines to his six co-defendants, including family boss Peter Gotti and Anthony “Sonny” Ciccone, the capo who ran the Brooklyn and Staten Island docks. Gotti, Judge Block said, was more figurehead than real boss, with little or no “decision-making authority.” Ciccone, 69, was “elderly,” Judge Block said, “the same age as the judge.”Brancato, a “bagman” who collected waterfront extortion payments and delivered them to his Mafia boss, faced 63 to 78 months, according to sentencing guidelines. Judge Block gave him two years, more than a year less than the gangster’s lawyer had dared to ask for during an impassioned plea in which attorney Joseph Tacopina painted his client as a changed man; one who now goes to church every day.“I assume he did a substantial amount of praying that the court would not incarcerate him,” Judge Block deadpanned, before bringing a big smile to Brancato’s face with the relatively short prison term.Throughout his legal career – 32 years as a lawyer in Suffolk County and 10 years on the bench – the Brooklyn born and raised jurist has always marched to the beat of his own drum. In 1961, for example, he went against the prevailing wisdom and registered as a Democrat, when he decided to settle in Suffolk County, a Republican stronghold.“I felt comfortable being in the minority,” he recalled in an interview with the New York Law Journal after his elevation to the federal bench.“I wasn’t a U.S. attorney, from a Wall Street firm, or the dean of Brooklyn Law School,” he said. Becoming a federal judge, he said, “was like catching lightning in a bottle.”Judge Block declined to discuss his remarks at the Federico and Brancato proceedings with Gang Land, but they easily could have been taken from “Professionally Speaking,” a satirical musical revue of the legal profession that Judge Block, who plays the piano, conceived, co-wrote, and produced in 1986.“Let’s kill all the lawyers to music,” Judge Block said in describing the play to the New York Times as the show opened a short off-Broadway run, adding: “I get a kick out of the seeming incongruity of being part of the establishment – and a part of a show that mocks it.”***A gaggle of Bonanno defectors are breathing a little easier over news that Chris Paciello, the former mob-connected Miami night club owner and Madonna pal who cooperated and got three years shaved off his prison term, will soon be able to hobnob with beautiful people.Turncoat killers like Salvatore “Good Looking Sal” Vitale and Frank “Curly” Lino don’t have any special affection for the former Bonanno associate, but they were concerned the 10-year sentence he first got did not bode well for them.Paciello had been involved in one murder – a Staten Island housewife that a hyped-up armed-robbery partner killed in a home invasion – but that paled by comparison to the mob slayings Vitale (12) and Lino (five) admitted during their testimony against Bonanno boss Joseph Massino.Last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Andres, the lead prosecutor at the Massino trial, and three other Brooklyn federal prosecutors teamed up with Paciello’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, to persuade Judge Edward Korman to cut his term to seven years.“Consider how far this relatively young man has come,” Brafman said. “He is someone who has provided extensive cooperation.”With normal time off, Paciello, who ran with a murderous Brooklyn-based crew of wannabe wiseguys before he relocated to Florida and the South Beach scene in 1993, should be released from his special federal prison unit for cooperating witnesses within two years.Prison sources say it won’t be too soon for his fellow inmates. “He whines all the time,” one source said. “He needs a reality check. He acts like he’s still at the top of his game, and like all the other (inmates) are bottom feeders.”According to court papers, the feds used information Paciello supplied to nail acting Colombo boss Alphonse Persico on racketeering charges, and to obtain indictments of several wiseguys who later cooperated against Massino.

The Bipolar Judge

The Bipolar Judge

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