By George Capsis
For most of us being appointed a Federal Trial Judge would be enough, but not for Frederic Block—he wants to talk about it and has published a behind-the-scenes look at trials like the one he presided over against Peter Gotti.
“Come and meet the Judge” Nelly Godfrey pleaded. “I gave him your paper and he loves it.” Since compliments have the force of gravity, I walked to her Christopher Street restaurant, Lima’s Taste, and asked the smiling Judge—who with a vacation home in Greece speaks better Greek than I do—if he could comment on Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos. He looked off into the middle distance and allowed that he could not comment on pending cases.
But he had brought a black binder containing the manuscript of his second book and pleaded with me to read the introduction, which I found near impossible to ingest trying to listen to the banter between him and three lawyers who had joined our party—one, he explained, “is more famous than me,” rattling off his credits one being that he defended Martha Stewart. I was in the presence of legal stars.
Just hours before the meeting, I had plunged into his book Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge and had thought, “how well written this is.”
Judge Block divides the book between opening autobiographical chapters and a look behind the scenes of trials like Kitty Genovese, the Crown Heights riot and Peter Gotti. This is a mandatory textbook for any starting lawyer and for lay readers an enthralling revelation about how courts work.
“Will you write a monthly column for WestView”? I demanded. I received a smile and acquiescence, so we will read what he has to say about the
outcome of the Skelos and Silver
trials in the January issue of WestView News—great!
