• Not every memorandum will be released for public review, but the court will account for each one and state whether it will be available.
BY W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres issued a ruling yesterday that called for a more detailed public accounting of memoranda submitted by prosecutors and defense lawyers for Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and four others under indictment in the City Hall corruption case.
In response to motions filed last month by The Providence Journal, Torres ruled that the public will now be allowed to see whether memoranda have been filed and whether they are available for review.
"If there is a deficiency in the existing procedure, it is that the Court has not made a specific record of its determination with respect to each individual memorandum," Torres wrote. "Henceforth, the Court will make such a record."
Last May, a month after Cianci and five others were charged with federal crimes, Torres issued a sweeping gag order that bars the mayor and the other defendants, their lawyers, prosecutors, witnesses, law-enforcement authorities and court workers from releasing information that is not part of the public record.
The gag order did not extend to public records in the case.
In the Journal affidavit, reporter Tracy Breton said she was told by the clerk's office that memoranda in the case were not available for public inspection. The District Court in Providence, as a matter of practice, has not made memoranda in cases part of the official public record.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers file memoranda in cases to explain their legal arguments in depth. Usually, the language is less formal.
Howard A. Merten, of Vetter & White, a Providence law firm representing the Journal, submitted evidence that the federal court in Providence is one of just five jurisdictions in the nation that does not make the memoranda public.
The Journal felt the memoranda filed with the court should be public and Breton protested to the court. The court agreed to make public memoranda that did not refer to grand jury information or contain prejudicial material.
According to Breton's affidavit, the memoranda have only been sporadically released.
Torres, in his ruling, challenged the Journal's assertion that 42 memoranda in the Cianci case have not been made available for public view. He said that 11 of the documents have been placed on file.
He said that he assumed many of the others withheld "were of no interest to the Journal," or involved "mundane matters" about exhibits. And, he said, that 11 others cannot be made public because they refer to grand jury matters and could jeopardize the rights of the accused to a fair trial.
Torres also accused Breton of overstating the delays in the filings. But, he said, one of the reasons is that the court has about 230 other cases to worry about, making it difficult to file the documents promptly.
Many of the memoranda were filed in late December and early January when the court was in the process of moving the clerk's office from the John O. Pastore Federal Building to the newly-renovated District Court next door.
"Consequently," Torres wrote, "during a period of several weeks beginning with packing for the move and ending with unpacking after the move, it would have been difficult to provide access to the Court files."
Cianci and three other defendants are scheduled to stand trial next month on racketeering and bribery charges. His top aide, Artin H. Coloian, will be tried separately. A sixth defendant, Joseph A. Pannone, former chairman of the city tax board, pleaded guilty to felony charges last week.
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