Brooklyn’s Democratic Party will meet today at St. Francis College for its annual nominating convention for state Supreme Court judges. Last year a fistfight erupted. This year the feeling is it could turn uglier.

Corruption scandals that have rocked the party have not gone away. The borough’s Democratic Party chairman, who was re-elected this week for another two years, is under indictment. And the anger about the role the rubber-stamp convention plays has intensified.

“This year could be a full-scale wrestling match,” said a Brooklyn Democrat on the City Council, David Yassky. “It could be a WWF, body-slam championship event – except it’s not fake, it’s real.”

To compound matters, the party’s beleaguered chairman, Clarence Norman Jr., rejected a recommendation this week of a special independent panel, created to weed out patronage. Instead, he nominated Justice Louis Marrero, whom the panel had deemed “not qualified.”

Mr. Marrero, a Republican, and four nominees who passed the panel’s screening process are to be voted onto the ballot by the party’s delegates today, virtually guaranteeing their victories in the November election.

Mr. Norman’s decision to buck the panel’s recommendation has outraged many Brooklyn Democrats, who were already railing against what they view as pervasive corruption, stemming from the handpicked selection of judicial nominees by party bosses.

“This is a new low,” Mr. Yassky said, referring to the nomination of Mr. Marrero. “If anyone needed a crystal-clear case for reform of the judicial selection process, that case is now right in front of your eyes.”

Mr. Norman has said he sees no reason to yank support from a sitting judge, like Mr. Marrero, unless there are ethical concerns about the judge’s performance. And sources, who did not want to be identified, said several prominent judges and lawyers had written to the panel to vouch for Mr. Marrero’s character.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn Democrats, Bob Liff, defended the party endorsement, saying guidelines allow a party to back sitting judges whether approved by the independent panel or not. Mr. Liff also said intra-party disagreements are part of politics, not something the party shies away from.

But others said that while independent panels are not flawless, disregarding their recommendations flies in the face of efforts to reform the judicial selection process and root out corruption.

Unlike Civil Court judges, who face primaries, candidates for state Supreme Court are chosen at conventions by party delegates, who generally back the party’s leadership.

Last year, the state’s chief judge, Judith Kaye, ordered the creation of independent screening panels like the one in Brooklyn.

The Democratic district leader from Park Slope, Alan Fleishman, one of only two party leaders to oppose nominating Mr. Marrero, said yesterday that Brooklyn’s party leadership was compromised by corruption scandals, past and present.

Justice Gerald Garson faces trial on bribery charges; a cousin of his, state Supreme Court Justice Michael Garson, sits accused of grand larceny, and Mr. Norman and the Democratic Party’s executive director, Jeffrey Feldman, have been indicted on charges of extortion and coercion of judicial candidates in the borough.

“It doesn’t really send a very good message to the Democrats in Brooklyn, or in the rest of the city, state, and country, that this is the way we operate,” Mr. Fleishman said.

“It’s all insider baseball here,” he added. “It’s not about merit, it’s about who you know.”

A Republican state senator from Syracuse who serves as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, John DeFrancisco, has sponsored a bill to abolish the convention system entirely and to institute primaries to select state Supreme Court judges.

“We need to open the process so it’s not just the party chairs, but it’s also the party regulars who have a say,” Mr. DeFrancisco said yesterday. He also said he was not in favor of the screenings panels, which he said added a layer of bureaucracy.

New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice filed a lawsuit in March saying the process for selecting Supreme Court judges is unconstitutional and violates the rights of voters, candidates, and political party members. The suit, which is waiting to be heard in federal court in Brooklyn, proposes replacing the current system with primaries and giving candidates the opportunity to get onto the primary ballot by petition.

The Brennan Center says that between 1994 and 2002, while 568 candidates for Supreme Court were nominated in New York, not one challenger won a nomination in a general election.

A Brennan Center lawyer, Jeremy Creelan, could not be reached yesterday, but in March the Associated Press quoted him as saying, “The current selection system robs voters of their constitutional right to choose their Supreme Court justices, and destroys their faith in the judiciary.”

When asked to respond to criticisms of the convention nominating process, Mr. Liff, the party spokesman, said: “Democracy is the worst system except for all the others. Do you want to go to partisan primaries? Do you want appointed judges?” He said the current method “may not be perfect” but is better than the other options.

Though state Supreme Court nominating conventions are taking place statewide this month, much of the attention is focused on Brooklyn. In addition to Mr. Marrero, the party is expected to vote another sitting judge, Michelle Weston Patterson, and three Civil Court judges – Wayne Saita, Eric Prus, and Sylvia Hinds-Radix – onto the ballot.

Last year a fistfight started between delegates when Margarita Lopez Torres, a challenger, did not get her name on the ballot. This year, Mr. Liff joked, officials will quash any fistfights before they break out.