Bruno Works the Press

So is former New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno crazy... or crazy like a fox? Bruno, on trial for public corruption at the federal courthouse in Albany, New York, has been serving as his own personal spin doctor at the courthouse each day, as detailed in today's New York Times:

For the last several weeks, Mr. Bruno, the irrepressible 80-year-old former Senate majority leader, has offered a running commentary on his own federal public corruption trial from the courthouse steps, playing both defendant and pundit to throngs of cameras and tape recorders.

He winks, he smiles, he gives thumbs up, at times seeming to glide through his trial with a stick of gum in his mouth and a quip on his lip.

So you wonder: is he doing it just because he can't help himself (old political tricks die hard), or is there another motive here? The jury after all (based on this story, anyway) is not sequestered:

U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe told the jurors he doesn't plan to sequester them, but he repeatedly insisted they not discuss the trial with anyone or follow media coverage.

But surely jurors don't disregard such instructions. Oh wait... they do. See, for example, this article concerning a Florida case earlier this year:

When U.S. District Judge William Zloch recently learned last week that a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida had been doing Internet research, in violation of the court's instructions, he was shocked.

But the judge was even more amazed to find out, when he then questioned other jurors, that eight others had been doing Web research on the case, too, reports the New York Times. At that point, the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial.

So while Bruno may just be crazy, or nervously desperate, it is naive to think jurors aren't catching at least some of the coverage.

And since I've been lacing my posts all week with quotes from prominent attorneys interviewed for the new edition of my book, In The Court of Public Opinion (American Bar Association, 2009), here are two more, germane to this discussion:

• Joseph Cheshire, who was one of the lead defense lawyers in the Duke lacrosse rape case:
  "The conventional wisdom during a court case is that you should never say anything. But you are doing a great disservice to your client... [w]e live in an age of immediate and total information. Jurors, judges and law enforcement officials can't help but be impacted by that flow of information. If you're not influencing, you are losing the fight."
• Trial lawyer W. Mark Lanier: "We can't assume the judge and jury have blinders on, when everything in our culture strips them of those blinders."

In both cases, well put.