Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the Sean Bell murder case met with Judge Arthur Cooperman in court for the first time, but it wasn’t until after yesterday’s proceedings that each side plans to share at least one strategy: accusing the other of creating a smear-fest.

The terse courtroom meeting lasted less than 10 minutes, resulting in a decision by Judge Cooperman to begin a two-week discovery phase in the case. Outside the Queens County courthouse, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, Michael Palladino, and the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, blamed the “antics” of the Reverend Al Sharpton and other elected officials for creating an atmosphere unfit for a fair trial.

“This country was built on a foundation, and that foundation is due process and innocence until proven guilty,” Mr. Palladino said. “That foundation has been at the least weakened, and may have been compromised in the case here with the detectives so far.”

While Mr. Palladino said the defense team would wait until the end of the discovery period to decide if it would push for a change in venue, he told The New York Sun on Tuesday that the defense would hire a private polling firm to gauge potential jury bias in Queens. Defense attorneys for the police officers accused of shooting Amadou Diallo instituted a similar poll. The trial was moved to Albany, where the officers were cleared of the charges.

“If they’re successful in getting the trial moved outside of Queens, they stand a much better shot at getting acquitted,” a veteran defense lawyer from Queens, Albert Gaudelli, said.

Mr. Sharpton sat in the courtroom yesterday with the two other men who were allegedly shot by the detectives on the night of Bells’s death, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield. He did not comment on his way out of the courtroom.

Two of the lawyers representing Bell’s parents, Peter St. George Davis and Damien Brown, spoke to the press minutes before Messrs. Paladino and Lynch. Mr. St. George Davis argued that it is the defense team that is spreading lies to smear Bell.

“They should be cognizant of the fact that they’re ruining and hurting the family,” he said. “I haven’t heard a single lie or a situation spread about the officers.”

Both sides will likely continue this chess match in the court of public opinion until their next day in court, May 14, a date set yesterday by Judge Cooperman.